Women represent the fastest-growing population in U.S. institutional corrections facilities. In the past four decades, the number of women incarcerated has increased by more than 475%, rising from 26,326 in 1980 to 152,854 in 2020. Because the majority of imprisoned women are mothers, a conservative estimate indicates that at least one million American children have […]

View Full Article - Baylor Researchers Examine Relationship Between Imprisoned Mothers and Their Adolescent Children’s Risk Behaviors

How Cal State Northridge is doing its part. The pandemic, if nothing else, exacerbated the unequal distribution of resources in society. For millions of people, access to food, shelter, and health care is now more uncertain than ever. What’s emerging is a new, somewhat dire need for experienced social workers – professionals, able to compassionately […]

View Full Article - In A New World, Social Work Leads the Way

Although extreme poverty in the United States is low by global standards, the U.S. has the worst index of health and social problems as a function of income inequality. In a newly published article, Bettina Beech, clinical professor of population health in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health Sciences at the University of […]

View Full Article - Poverty, Racism and the Public Health Crisis in America

Comprehensive evidence points to increased vulnerability of workers to forced labor in global supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, an analysis published today by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (Modern Slavery PEC) has found. The Centre, which was created to enhance understanding of modern slavery and transform the effectiveness of […]

View Full Article - The Covid Pandemic Increased Vulnerability to Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains

The COVID-19 pandemic shed a glaring light on the important role that technology and access to high-speed internet play our lives. You would not be able to read this story without an internet connection and a device to read it on. How would you communicate with loved ones, do your homework or pay your bills […]

View Full Article - The Digital Divide is a Human Rights Issue

Recently, I had the opportunity to give a webinar on disability cultural competence to social service workers, but was met with many blank stares. As a disabled social worker myself, I often notice that the disability community is not recognized as a cultural group. Disability is also not considered as a social identity in diversity […]

View Full Article - What Do You Know About Disability Cultural Competence?

The rates of death and health burdens associated with air pollution are borne unequally and inequitably by people of color and those with lower household income and educational attainment in Washington, D.C., according to a new study. Air pollution is considered the leading environmental risk factor to health, and recent efforts have successfully brought down […]

View Full Article - Air Pollution Disproportionally Affects People of Color, Lower-Income Residents in DC

By Sanya Carley and David M. Konisky Energy insecurity—defined as the inability to pay one’s energy bill or avoid utility disconnection—is a pervasive and growing problem in the United States. Approximately 4.7 million low-income households were unable to pay an energy bill over the past year, 4.8 million received a notice for utility disconnection, and 2 million […]

View Full Article - What the U.S. Government Can Do to Address Energy Insecurity

As researchers investigate reasons for America’s persistent gender wage gap, one possible explanation that has emerged in roughly the last decade is that women may be less competitive than men, and are therefore passed over for higher-ranking roles with larger salaries. But a new study suggests that it’s likely not that simple. Researchers found that […]

View Full Article - Study Casts Doubt on Theory That Women Aren’t as Competitive as Men

A new analysis led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers finds that the number of U.S. adults who report they have a disability is 27%, representing 67 million adults, an increase of 1% since the data were last analyzed in 2016. In this new study, which used data collected in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the […]

View Full Article - New Analysis: More U.S. Adults Identify as Disabled; Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities Persist

The 2020 elections saw robust gains for Republican women in state legislatures and Congress. Republican women increased their numbers from 13 to 31 in the U.S. House of Representatives, and from 662 to 729 in state legislatures nationally. The impressive performance of Republican women in elected office led CBS News to label 2020 as “The […]

View Full Article - The Partisan Gap Among Women in Elective Office in 2020 and Beyond

October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month, but let’s make it our mission year-round to end the one important thing that, paradoxically, is both a dire consequence of domestic violence and a factor contributing to its perpetuation: shame. Sadly, victims of domestic violence often feel a deep yet unwarranted sense of shame, as if they were […]

View Full Article - Let’s End the Shame That Silences Victims of Domestic Violence

Calls to increase the number of teachers of color, specifically African American teachers, have intensified over the past decade. Educators and their organizations, school administrators, and policymakers increasingly agree that a lack of diversity among teachers hurts U.S. students. But this is not the first time this problem has been highlighted, so we must learn […]

View Full Article - Why America Needs More African American Teachers – and How to Recruit and Retain Them

American cities have long been unequal places – with big class and racial gaps that often overlap. Residents of particular neighborhoods often experience many severe deprivations all at once. Scholars try to understand these overlapping urban inequalities by mapping concentrations of racial and ethnic groups along with those areas that experience concentrated poverty, using U.S. […]

View Full Article - Why Growing Urban Inequality is as Much About White Affluence as Minority Poverty

The instructional models that are used to train police officers across the U.S. at the academy, in-service, mid-rank, and leadership levels are in many cases antiquated, inadequate, and in critical need of immediate transformation, according to a new report released by American University’s School of Public Affairs (SPA). Entitled “Re-Envisioning Police Training in the U.S.: Rejecting […]

View Full Article - Police Training Needs Urgent Reforms, New Report from American University Reveals

By Fernando Tormos, Gustavo García-López, and Mary Angelica Painter After a hurricane strikes, governments and electric utility companies go to work restoring a sense of normalcy to their communities. Typical disaster recovery efforts include providing food and shelter to the displaced and medical services to the injured, and turning the power back on. While governments […]

View Full Article - How Inequality and Politics Influence Government Responses to Natural Disasters

By Kate Coleman-Minahan & Amanda Stevenson Seventeen-year-old Jane played soccer and dreamed of going to Texas A&M. When she saw the positive pregnancy test, she started to cry. “I want to give my kid everything, the best, better than I have. And I knew I couldn’t do that.” Jane had always been “against abortion.” But, […]

View Full Article - The Process of Seeking a Judicial Bypass for Abortion May Harm Adolescents

It’s striking and familiar. A new report finds women physicians across all races and ethnicities earn less than their male counterparts. In fact, women physicians earn between 67 cents and 77 cents on the dollar compared to white men physicians. This new data, which comes from the Association of American Medical Colleges, reinforces that academic medicine […]

View Full Article - Among Physicians, Men Make More Than Women: How Do We Change That?

By Daniela Mansbach & Alisa Von Hagel Anti-abortion organizations aim to make abortion illegal for all women – or, barring that, to make abortion as difficult as possible to access. The war on abortion access has many fronts, including mandated delays, special counseling rules, and rules limiting the reasons a woman can offer for wanting […]

View Full Article - The Abortion Barriers and Needs of Black Women

Chanel, now a middle-class mother of one, is just one of many women who have used abortion to end a pregnancy. “In college,” she explained, “I had two abortions and I had them not because I didn’t want to be a mother but because I wasn’t ready. I wanted to finish school and I just […]

View Full Article - Why Understanding Black Women’s Beliefs About Motherhood Can Help Improve Reproductive Health Care