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Early educators are among the lowest-paid workers in the country, yet the work they do is critically important for children, families, and the economy. The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at IRLE issued the inaugural edition of a biennial report on the early care and education workforce: The Early Childhood Workforce Index. The

Jobs are notoriously gender-segregated. But examinations of companies' hiring data often don't show a female disadvantage, even for male-dominated jobs. Many audit studies, on the other hand, do. This discrepancy can be partially explained by accounting for "failed searches" - cases when employers decide not to hire anyone from the applicant pool they receive. Professor

Please note that this event will be held at 223 Moses Hall. Intergenerational mobility is about twice as great in Canada than in the United States, but varies significantly within each country. Our sub-national analysis of six different indicators finds that the national border only partially distinguishes the close to one thousand regions we analyze within

Dr. Holmes will present new research in development on indigenous Mexican farmworker youth in California, Washington State, and the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. This mixed-method qualitative research will explore hierarchies of race, class, gender, and language, as well as sources of strength and resilience among Triqui and Mixtec farmworker youth. In addition, the project will focus on

Newborns require a lot of resources. And with the changes in income composition that come with a birth, many families face financial uncertainty. This has implications for children’s health and development, women’s economic security, and public program design. This research finds that households see significant and enduring declines in economic security before and after a

In the golden age of Latin America’s labor movement, unions were the main representatives of the popular interest and, for many citizens, unions were their main tie to the political arena. But the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s sent many workers into the informal sector – work that is untaxed, unregulated and, historically, underrepresented politically. Recently,

Please note the change in date for this event. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed an extraordinary expansion of educational opportunity in the U.S. Professor Taylor will explore intergenerational links in educational outcomes during this golden age of upward mobility, using household data from the 1940s. His research shows that for white, black, Chinese,

It’s not unusual for employees to miss work from time to time. Little is known, however, about how worker absences affect productivity, and how employers cope with absenteeism. We do know that in schools, disruption can be especially harmful. IRLE Visiting Scholar Asma Benhenda will present research, based on administrative data on French teachers and

Please note that this event will take place exceptionally on a Thursday. Opponents of minimum wage increases have long worried about their impact on restaurants, which often rely on low-wage workers. Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca will present research on raising the minimum wage in cities such as San Francisco, where they find that

NEW LOCATION: 2521 Channing Way, IRLE Director's Room In 2017, Liberals in the United States are calling for “resistance” to regressive policies. Grassroots movements like the Fight for $15 show a desire for an offensive strategy on the left, but Professor Hamilton suggests that they do not go far enough. Raising the minimum wage still

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Rick Wartzman’s new book, The End of Loyalty, details the erosion of the social contract between corporations and employees since World War II, the decline of American labor and the current rise of populism in the United States. Wartzman follows four corporate giants – General Electric, General Motors, Kodak, and Coca-Cola

The sharing economy debuted to grand claims about its ability to change the world for the good--it would encourage social connection, use assets more efficiently, and be better for the environment. For earners on platforms, it promised flexibility, freedom and the ability to become a "micro-entrepreneur." Ten years in, the reality is far more complex.

We know about the one percent. The ultra-rich. The billionnaire class. But author Richard Reeves writes it’s the upper middle class that matters most. Those top twenty percent of earners are becoming more effective at passing wealth to their children, and – through zoning laws, schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of

Once, activists dreamed of an all-inclusive movement for poor people. But then came the 1950s – labor began to decline as a social movement, and civil rights leaders turned away from their early focus on labor rights. What role did the courts play in pushing these movements apart? Professor Fisk finds that the era’s labor

Professor Brand will explore the complex ways in which the shock of job loss impacts workers' health, career achievement, and economic outcomes, and how these effects reverberate in their families and communities.

It’s no secret that recruiting guest workers can be a shady business. Often, the fraud and extortion that guest workers face are blamed on a few bad apple recruiters, who are targeted by criminal regulation that almost never works. But the problems are bigger than bad apples. Structural forces encourage abuse, from the subcontracting common

In 2010, the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court decision upheld corporations’ right to participate in politics, declaring that limits to their political spending would infringe on freedom of speech. But money is not the only political resource that corporations can use. Private companies have access to – and control over – powerful human capital in

It’s been over fifty years since President Johnson declared war on poverty, and each year, our federal and state governments spend billions of dollars trying to alleviate it. So why are some 45.3 million Americans still living below the poverty line? Why is there still no consensus on what can be done to reduce poverty?

Register   Introduced by Karen Chapple, City and Regional Planning Chris Benner, UC Santa Cruz: "Inclusive Economies: Conceptual, Measurement and Process Issues" Incorporating insights from ecological economics, theories of social well-being, and concepts of pro-poor and inclusive growth, this talk will discuss insights from the application of a five-dimensional framework for analyzing and promoting more

Policy makers frustrated with slack labor markets, diverging wage and productivity growth, and continued lag in the incomes of Black workers have increasingly begun to consider legislation that would guarantee everyone a job. The right to a job has been part of U.S. policy debates before. The preamble to the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, passed

Voorheis will discuss the implications of his research finding that minimum wage policies increase long-term earnings of low-wage workers, and possibly reasons for the persistence of those effects. Rising income inequality and stagnating economic mobility have prompted state and local governments to focus on higher minimum wages. As these policies expand, an understanding of how

Racial disparities persist throughout the employment process, with African-Americans experiencing significant barriers compared to whites. This talk will help us gain a deeper understanding of racial labor market stratification by bringing new theoretical insights and original data to bear on the ways that social networks shape racial disparities in accessing employment opportunities. Existing scholarship points

In his talk, Western will bear witness to the lives held captive in America’s experiment with mass incarceration. Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison tells the stories of the men and women he met through the Boston Reentry Study, a series of interviews his research team conducted with people leaving prison for neighborhoods around

What determines whether movements of informal workers succeed or fail? Using cases of domestic-worker movements in Mexico and the United States, Tilly seeks to  build upon the literature on social movements and intersectionality by adding historical analysis of the movements’ evolution through a cross-national analysis of movement differences. Historically, these two movements have been propelled by

After Social Security, the Food Stamp Program touches the lives of more American families than any other element of the social safety net. What is the impact of this program on the long-term outcomes of children who receive these resources early in life? Hoynes uses the rollout of the Food Stamp Program between 1961 and

Do formal evaluation procedures really reduce bias? As an organizational practice, are they a smokescreen concealing bias or a great leveler that bolsters meritocracy? While organizations formalize evaluation procedures to help achieve meritocratic outcomes, they often fail to eliminate bias in practice. Managers play a key role in applying such procedures, but researchers have been

Discussions about the future of work have focused on the idea that technology will soon reduce or alter the need for human labor in many occupations. Has this conventional narrative failed to focus on the key challenges facing workers today and in the future? Osterman will offer a perspective on these discussions, and how they

Los Angeles County operates the largest jail system in the United States, which incarcerates more people than any other nation on Earth. At a cost of nearly $1 billion annually, more than 20,000 people are caged every night in L.A.’s county jails and city lockups. But not every neighborhood is equally impacted by L.A.’s massive

Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Many think that reducing economic inequality would require such heavy-handed interference with market forces that it would stifle economic growth.  Heather Boushey insists that rising inequality actually undermines growth in three ways. It obstructs the supply of talent, ideas, and capital as wealthy families monopolize the

Workers over age 55 are projected to fill more than half of the 11.4 million net new jobs created between 2016 and 2026. Despite their numbers, older workers’ bargaining power in the labor market has been declining, threatening to suppress wages and working conditions for all workers. Ghilarducci, a nationally-recognized expert in retirement security, will