• Overview

    Since 2018, cash transfer programs in the US have increased substantially, driven by a cost-of living crisis, concerns over jobs lost to automation, and economic instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments, civil society, and private actors at the state, county, and city levels have implemented nearly 100 guaranteed income programs since 2018. Despite this growth, support for implementing such programs in the US has been quite limited.

    December 8, 2023

  • Housing credit inflows are a substantial contributor to economic opportunity and vitality in a community. Due to historic inequities in housing policy and lending practices, mortgage capital can often be scarce in neighborhoods whose residents predominantly belong to racial and ethnic minority groups.

    August 31, 2023

  • Access to contraception, receipt of quality medical care, and the ability of individuals to make their own reproductive decisions are critical elements of basic healthcare and health equity for all. The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and related trigger laws have severely limited access to safe abortions in parts of the United States, especially for women with low incomes and women of color.

    August 10, 2022

  • Now entering its third year, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter the lives of people everywhere and exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities in income, wealth and access to resources and care. The nation is also grappling with the perpetuation and consequences of hundreds of years of systemic racism.

    January 31, 2022

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated racial, ethnic, and gender disparities that have existed since long before the current public health crisis. With declining infection rates and increasing vaccination rates, the United States seems to be on a path to recovery. But a full recovery from the health and economic fallout of the pandemic will require adequately supporting our most vulnerable communities. A new analysis confirms disparate health and economic effects by race, ethnicity, and gender and inadequate public policy responses in the wake of the pandemic and offers actionable solutions for a more equitable recovery.

    June 24, 2021

  • Two pandemics upended our nation this year. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to sicken, kill, and reshape the lives of people everywhere, and is also testing our nation’s healthcare, public health, education, and social protection systems like never before. The second pandemic is one that has been with us since well before our nation’s founding but has come into much sharper focus this past year. Like a virus, it has infected virtually every aspect of our society including our laws and policies, a central focus of the Policies for Action (P4A) research program: systemic racism and its attendant social, economic, and political injustices. Although this time last year, the need for sound policy research was clear – especially in light of growing inequality in health and wealth, and the conditions that drive and are shaped by these – 2020 made these needs more visible and more urgent. As P4A enters its sixth year, a strong and growing community of policy researchers across the country, supported by a stellar National Advisory Committee, are generating a host of research findings crucially needed at this moment.

    January 29, 2021

  • It is with good reason that there has been an outpouring of support for essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Essential workers have tended to the sick, responded to emergencies, and kept the food supply intact, thus permitting the rest of society to have continued access to health care and basic necessities, and to remain safe and, for the most part, comfortable. As has been reported, Black and Latino workers make up a large share of the essential workforce, and these demographic groups have experienced higher rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Discrimination, disparate access to health services, higher rates of chronic illness, lower incomes, and deficiencies in housing and other social determinants of health have all contributed to the higher risk of COVID-19–related illness and death among racial and ethnic minorities.

    November 13, 2020

  • In this report, P4A researchers Amelia Coffey, Eleanor Lauderback and H. Elizabeth Peters, along with their partners at the University of Oregon’s Department of Sociology Lola Loustaunau, Larissa Petrucci, Ellen Scott and Lina Stepick, examine Oregon’s implementation of S.B. 828, the first statewide predictive scheduling law in the nation, in its first year.

    September 22, 2020

  • Despite extensive research showing that shift work compromises employee health, jobs that require work outside the traditional daytime hours of 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM have become ubiquitous across economically developed nations. Employers enact work scheduling policies based on the needs of company stakeholders and without evidence of the effect of shift work on health care costs, even though the companies ultimately bear the majority of those costs. Researchers Megan McHugh, Dustin D. French, Mary M. Kwasny, Claude R. Maechling, and Jane L. Holl examined the additional health care costs incurred by two large manufacturing companies due to their shift work requirements in this brief published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

    August 10, 2020

  • Paid family leave policies have the potential to reduce health disparities, yet access to paid leave remains limited and unevenly distributed in the United States. The US is the only OECD country that does not provide paid leave for new parents, and just 8 states and the District of Columbia have passed partially-paid family leave policies. In a new paper, Julia Goodman of the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Will Dow of UC Berkeley, and Holly Elser of Stanford University examine the impact of the 2017 San Francisco Paid Parental Leave Ordinance (PPLO), the first in the US to provide parental leave with full pay. 

    July 7, 2020