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This project will use the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center's enhanced model to examine how the federal tax treatment of capital income and wealth might affect Black families differently than white families. We will also consider the racial equity effects of alternative tax policies—both those aimed at reducing the tax burden of all capital holders and those that would explicitly redistribute wealth in ways that could narrow the racial wealth gap.

Housing policy is disability policy, particularly for low-income households served by federal housing programs. People with disabilities are overrepresented in federally assisted rental housing, with 407 out of every 1,000 assisted households reporting a disability.

The US is facing a housing affordability crisis that continues to exacerbate economic and racial inequities. Inclusionary zoning policies (IZ), which require real estate developers to include below market-rate units in new housing projects, and rent control regulations, which place caps on rental price increases, have reemerged as potential solutions to the housing affordability crisis. However, rent control and IZ policies are complicated and controversial. Studies generally find that rent control decreases rents for tenants in controlled units, but that these benefits may be offset by greater costs in the uncontrolled rental market. Likewise, while there is some evidence that IZ policies can provide economic opportunity for residents with low incomes, critics argue that they also reduce the overall supply of housing and serve as a short-term solution to the larger problem.

People who receive vouchers or other forms of federal or local housing assistance are not protected from discrimination by federal fair housing or civil rights laws, and in most places, landlords can legally refuse to rent to voucher holders. Researchers will assess whether and under what conditions state and local protections reduce landlord discrimination and improve the rate at which voucher holders are successful at finding housing.

Greater scheduling predictability may reduce parental stress and increase child care stability, job stability, and income. Researchers will use qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the implementation of the Oregon law and analyze the impacts on family and child health outcomes.

Birth outcomes, including infant mortality and low birth weight, are shockingly poor in the U.S. Researchers will assess whether the ACA increased intended pregnancies, reduced prepregnancy smoking, and affected contraception and birth outcomes among women covered by Medicaid--and whether these changes reduced disparities across racial and ethnic groups.

The impact of the opioid epidemic on children, their families, and on child-serving systems (early childhood education, schools, child welfare, etc.) is not well understood. This exploratory project will examine some of the most critical dimensions, urgent challenges, and important nuances for policymakers and others, drawing on a review of the existing literature and a deeper dive into two states at the forefront of the opioid epidemic.

Katie Chapline is a policy program manager in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. She oversees program operations and evaluation for Policies for Action, a signature research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports innovative research on how public- and private-sector laws and policies can help build a culture of health in America. Before joining Urban, Chapline was deputy director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program, a research and leadership development award for junior nursing faculty.

Josh Smith is a Senior Project Manager in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Since joining the Urban team in 2014 he has taken on tasks including proposal development, purchase orders, subcontract/consultant set-up, and budgeting.

Lisa Dubay, PhD, is a Senior Fellow with the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center and co-directs Urban’s cross-center initiative on the social determinants of health. Dr. Dubay is a nationally recognized expert on the Medicaid and CHIP programs, and is currently involved in major evaluations of delivery system reform.

Federal housing assistance benefits 11 million people through three main programs: public housing, project-based Section 8 housing, and housing choice vouchers. Researchers use multiple datasets to examine the effects of federal housing assistance programs on food security, health-promoting behaviors, and health outcomes.

This series of case studies identifies and describes several emerging and promising interventions that sit at the intersection of housing and health across the country. Interventions reflect a variety of approaches and models from a diversity of communities and will span both the public and private sectors.