INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

This month’s new research from our faculty experts explores how integrating biological and prevention sciences might improve mental health treatment and improving meta-analyses to stren...

Sera Young receives the “Champions of Health” Award from Mexico's National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico on March 4, 2025.  In July 2022, Mexico declared ...

In the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women, highlighting the stark health disparities between Black and White mothers. Ev...

By 2100, the global population could reach 11 billion, intensifying the demand for energy, water, and food. How can the world meet these needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Nobel Laurea...

In the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has moved from a futuristic concept to a powerful technology reshaping our everyday lives. AI tools are driving cars, detecting credit card fra...

Right before Thanksgiving a few years ago, IPR political scientist Mary McGrath gave a talk about Americans’ attitudes on climate change to an audience made up largely of students. She share...

Two IPR faculty have been recognized by the analytics firm Clarivate as Highly Cited Researchers for 2024: IPR statistician Elizabeth Tipton and professor of medical social sciences David Cella, a...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts examines the connection between poverty and health and how gut microbes may have fueled the evolution of larger brains. It also looks at th...

American teenagers are not all right. For over a decade, they have struggled with declining mental health. Growing rates of anxiety and depression, emergency room visits for mental health issues, ...

While the minimum wage for fast food workers in Los Angeles has risen to $20 per hour, instances of wage theft—when employers break the law by not paying their workers for their full hours ...

Jencks delivers the keynote lecture at IPR’s 40th-anniversary conference in 2009. Christopher “Sandy” Jencks, former John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and fellow of the Cen...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts investigates how strategic moderation leads to legislative success and how immigration policies impact family planning. It also looks at ho...

On Jan. 21, IPR faculty Nichole Pinkard and Elizabeth Tipton were elected to the National Academy of Education (NAEd), along with 20 other prominent experts in education research and policy. They ...

Michael Kraus meets with members of his Contending with Societal Inequality Lab. “I think about progress in a lot of ways,” said psychologist Michael Kraus at an IPR colloquium on Jan....

Johns Hopkins sociologist Stefanie DeLuca, one of the nation’s leading experts on housing mobility, vouchers, and policy, will join Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR) a...

Kirabo Jackson (first row, fourth from left) served on President Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. IPR economist Kirabo Jackson never imagined he’d end up advising the president of the U...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts investigates the link between emotional regulation in childhood and adult inflammation and the connection between Donald Trump's social med...

 In 2024, IPR’s researchers explored pressing social issues, including the replication crisis and the mental health effects of school shootings on kids and teenagers. It was also a big y...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts explores what drives racial differences in C-section deliveries and what makes nutrition interventions successful. It also examines how out...

IPR fellow Sylvia Perry (right) meets with IPR graduate research assistant Jonathan Doriscar in the Social Cognition and Intergroup Processes Laboratory. IPR psychologist Sylvia Perry received thr...

Attendees from the Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials workshop gather for a photo on July 25, 2024.  The Statistics for Evidence-Based Policy and Practice (STEPP) Center...

IPR’s 2024 summer undergraduate research assistants take a photo during their training session. Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR) is helping to shape the next generatio...

Recent policy addressing student loan debt, including the pausing of payments during the pandemic and President Biden’s overturned executive order canceling some federal student loans, has r...

Interactions between police officers and the public have been under heightened scrutiny in recent years as videos of the killings of Black Americans have led to mass protests and calls for reform....

During a Nov. 11 post-election panel, four IPR experts unpacked the 2024 election results, putting polls, partisanship, and policy reactions into context for the more than 160 in attendance. Moderated by political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong, panelists political scientist Chloe Thurston, social psychologist Eli Finkel, and communications and policy scholar Erik Nisbet reflected on the rightward sweep of Congress and the presidency and what their research reveals about this political moment.

Terese Sommer (third from the right) with project partners at the Crann Centre in March 2024, where she gave a talk and interviewed clients and staff to learn more about their work and impact. Ire...

John McKnight illustrates his approach during his 2003 IPR Distinguished Public Policy Lecture “Regenerating Community: The Recovery of a Space for Citizens.”    John McKnigh...

As voting in one of the most contested U.S. presidential elections in decades draws to a close on Nov. 5, many are wondering if election-related violence will follow. A new study by Northwestern re...

Neighborhoods are more than just physical spaces—they are communities shaped by people, institutions, and the connections that bind them together. These relationships, along with access to both internal and external resources, define these communities and shape the lives and wellbeing of their residents. At an October 9 research briefing on Capitol Hill, sociologist Andrew Papachristos, director of the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), highlighted the persistent disparities in communities’ resources and opportunities.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s unexpected rise to become the Democratic presidential nominee—following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal—has transformed the 2024 presidentia...

After the pandemic shut down schools and daycares, some academic institutions looked for ways to make the tenure process more equitable for faculty juggling work and caregiving responsibilities. C...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts investigates how a family-centered education program in Tulsa supports student parents, visibility and wellbeing in the bi+ community, perc...

IPR's new fellows (from top left, clockwise): Jessica Hullman, Katie Insel, Michael Kraus, Kate Weisshaar, Rob Voigt, and Ivy Onyeador. This fall, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR)...

Many factors shape how many children adults want—including external events and threats. For example, a quarter of Americans say concerns about climate change have made them consider having fe...

From a young age, IPR social psychologist Eli Finkel pursued a “life of the mind,” driven by curiosity. While studying social psychology as a Northwestern undergraduate, he quickly dis...

School shootings are an all-too-common reality for a growing number of American students. Since the 1999 Columbine shooting, more than 378,000 students have experienced a shooting at school, accord...

During the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary, many considered Joe Biden the most electable candidate given his moderate policy positions. Four years later, President Biden’s percei...

 The U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis due to the sharp rise in firearm injuries since 2020. A first-of-its-kind report issued by Dr. Vivek Murthy provides a lo...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in the ...

 In 2016, the progressive community organization Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) successfully pushed for a higher minimum wage and the right to paid sick leave in Arizona through a...

 During a panel at EC*REACH's launch conference, Marquinta Thomas and Leslie McKinily (left to right) discuss early childhood education and care in Chicago. On June 10 in downtown Chicago, nea...

 The 2024 "Economic Report of the President" explores some of the country's greatest economic hurdles, such as the shifting demographics of the workforce and the drug overdose crisis. The...

 A growing body of research shows that racial discrimination can negatively impact physical health. What isn’t fully understood are the mechanisms that link the two. A new study finds th...

 While Native Americans can trace their ancestry in what is now the United States back thousands of years, they were only granted U.S. citizenship in the last century through the 1924 Indian C...

Throughout its history, the U.S. has battled waves of widespread drug addiction. From painkiller addictions on Civil War battlefields to the 1980s era of crack cocaine, each crisis gives way to a ...

 Many Americans say that increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at work is a good thing. However, new research finds that U.S. workers believe more DEI progress is being made than w...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts explores partisan disparities in the use of science in policy and how immigration enforcement affects public safety. Their research also cr...

Alondra Nelson (left) sat down for a conversation with IPR Director and sociologist Andrew V. Papachristos. From mundane activities, such as movie suggestions and step-by-step directions whil...

High school is a crucial institution shaping students’ life trajectories, but how does attending a large, diverse school affect that experience? In a forthcoming book, IPR sociologist Simone...

After graduating college in the late 1990s, Olga Kamenchuk worked as a journalist at a local radio and TV station in Ivanovo, Russia. At the time, the press was relatively free under President Bor...

IPR’s Sera Young visits with Kajiado county water officials in Kenya to learn about ongoing water issues. In late March, IPR anthropologist Sera Young took part in a deluge of activity around...

  When Chicago Public Schools (CPS) expanded to a free, citywide Universal PreK (UPK) program in 2018–19, how did that expansion affect capacity and enrollment in neighborhoods across Ch...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts investigates adolescent experiences and wellbeing the pandemic and the connection between abortion access and selective high schools. It al...

How should we approach the governance of artificial intelligence models and tools to steward their potential public benefit? Do we need new rules, regulations, and standards to accompany each new ...

In 2011, one of the American Psychological Association’s flagship, peer-reviewed journals published a study that claimed to prove that ESP—or extrasensory perception—exists. The ...

This month’s new research from our faculty experts examines age differences in anxiety and depression among U.S. adults during the pandemic and childhood trauma and adverse birth outcomes. I...

  Seven IPR faculty received seed grant funding to launch their research in new directions, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations. A small committee of IPR fellows awarded six g...

IPR statistician Elizabeth Tipton has been named one of 24 fellows for 2024 by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest interdisciplinary association devote...

  Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin (left) speaks with SESP Dean Bryan Brayboy (right) on Jan. 23. Ruha Benjamin wants us to reckon with the impossible. A world without prisons? Sch...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates the COVID-19 "baby bump," racial disparities in school belonging and long-term health outcomes, and how to make space for Black and La...

Political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong will step into the role of associate director at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR) on Sept. 1. Harbridge-Yong is known for her studi...

  In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that nearly half of eastern Oklahoma is on an Indian reservation, and crimes committed on that land involving Native Americans had to b...

  Over the 2018–19 school year, Chicago began expanding free, full-day prekindergarten (pre-K) for 3- and 4-year-olds through Chicago Public Schools (CPS). How has the expansion fared in...

IPR social demographer Christine Percheski shares her research at an IPR colloquium on Nov. 6.  According to the American Psychological Association, eight out of 10 children in the United Sta...

  The lack of civility in political conversations has increased alongside the rise in partisan hatred—and nowhere is that toxicity more evident than on social media platforms. But why is...

  A century ago, political scientists understood their discipline as an observational science—not an experimental one. Today, experiments have become central to political science as they...

  K street in Washington, D.C. is often associated with lobbying and lobbying organizations. On May 2, 2023, four ComEd employees, including former ComEd lobbyist Mike McClain, were convicted ...

  Inflammation protects against infections and aids in healing. But if left uncontrolled, it can lead to heart disease and other degenerative diseases of aging and is often considered a "norma...

  IPR political scientist James Druckman discusses his research on trust in science at an IPR colloquium on Nov. 27, 2023.  During the pandemic, the United States quickly responded to the...

   By the end of June, the Supreme Court will rule on the consideration of race in college admission decisions. Two cases allege that Harvard University and the University of North Caroli...

  Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic almost four years ago, people across the U.S. have reported increased rates of depression and anxiety. While the mental health crisis touched a broad...

While the World Health Organization officially declared an end to the global pandemic in 2023, concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic’s lingering effect remain clear in IPR’s top st...

This month's new research from IPR faculty examines the relationship between suicidal thoughts and social disconnection in older adults, the impacts of LSD on brain function, whether a to...

 As the 2024 presidential election draws near, media attention will be centered on both official and unofficial campaign events, from tumultuous debates to jarring revelations and scandals. Bu...

Sociologist and author Ruha Benjamin, whose latest book argues that seemingly small efforts can help build a more just and joyful world, is the featured speaker for Northwestern University’s...

  The daughter of an immigrant holds a flag at her mother's naturalization ceremony in 2019. Even before the United States was founded, Benjamin Franklin worried about the number of Germans &#...

This month's new research from IPR faculty explores gut microbiota in wild baboons that have access to trash containing processed food high in sugar, the challenges of balancing primary and ge...

  The number of uninsured children in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But between 2016 and 2019, the trend reversed and the number of children without health insurance started rising....

 Police et Société en France (Policing in France)  Edited by Jacques de Maillard and Wesley G. Skogan   Presses de Science Po, 2023  In France, the security manag...

  New research suggests that a school’s racial climate is linked to students' physical health long after they leave the classroom.  In a recent JAMA Pediatrics study, IPR health psy...

 The federal funds allotted to school districts to combat pandemic-induced learning loss will end in less than a year, but the U.S. is stalled on progress to reverse the once-a-century educati...

The theme of this year’s World Food Day was “Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind.” The journal Nature Water commemorated the day on October 16 by hosting a webinar ...

   Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s mental health has been in decline. Years of uncertainty, lockdowns, grief, and economic precarity led to at least four out ...

SESP and Weinberg senior Amelia Vasquez (right) discusses a research project with IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol (left), who mentored Vasquez during the SURA program over the summ...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines support for political violence, a two-generation program to improve immigrant parents' english, and proposes a multidisciplinary roadm...

Researchers filmed interactions of preschoolers to create a new video measure of implicit bias in classrooms. On a balmy summer day, 17 Evanston preschoolers happily played with blocks, worked on p...

Northwestern Provost Kathleen Hagerty has appointed IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin as faculty director of student access and enrichment, effective Sept. 1. In this inaugural role, Destin wi...

On August 11, President Joe Biden announced his intention to appoint IPR economist Kirabo Jackson as a senior member of his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). The CEA sits within the Executive Of...

Daniel Galvin, Eli Finkel, Laurel Harbridge-Yong, Ofer Malamud, Sally Nuamah, Elizabeth Tipton (from top left, clockwise) Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research (IPR) welcomed social ps...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates early-life psychological stress and long-term health effects, the incarceration rates of immigrants and U.S.-born men, and public perce...

During the 2022–23 academic year, IPR psychologist Sylvia Perry took leave for a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University. Each year,...

By the end of March 2020, over 4,000 colleges and universities across the country had closed their campuses in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, affecting more than 25 million students. Eighty-fo...

Andrew Papachristos speaks at a CORNERS symposium in December 2022.   Northwestern University has appointed prominent sociologist Andrew Papachristos director of its Institute for Policy ...

IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol and IPR economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach recently released a new IPR rapid research report, “The Chicago Universal Pre-K S...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in the ...

In 2020, California established a Reparations Task Force to study “the institution of slavery and its lingering negative effects on living African Americans” and develop proposals for ...

This month’s new research covers studies examining the relationship between an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status and their preferred news source, the impact of concerns abou...

  Young women, especially Black and Latina girls, suffer disproportionately from trauma-related depression, PTSD, and anxiety, yet little is known about treatment options. Recent research by I...

The 2023 "Economic Report of the President" to Congress outlined some of the country's greatest economic challenges from food insecurity to affordable education, presenting policymakers with possi...

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Mesmin Destin, Christopher Kuzawa, Soledad McGrath, Jonathan Guryan, Terri Sabol, Kirabo Jackson, Andrew Papachristos, Sera Young, Dan Galvin (from top left, ...

IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol and IPR economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and their colleagues, Kathryn Gonzalez, Tianshi Wang, and Elana Rich, recently released an IPR rapid resear...

IPR economist Elisa Jácome studies public policy issues centered on immigration, crime, and mental health.

Sera Young (far left) works with farmers in rural Tanzania on an experiment to improve gender equality in farming. Empowering women farmers in low- and middle-income countries can lead to greater c...

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach introduces Harvard economist Raj Chetty in February 2023. Under her leadership, IPR became a nexus for policy discussion and debate at Northwestern. Economist Diane Whit...

The 2024 primary election cycle will kick off in less than a year, determining which candidates will end up on ballots in the November general election. But appealing to primary voters and their p...

Stay up-to-date with the latest IPR faculty media mentions concerning COVID-19 as well as other IPR news related to the coronavirus in 2023. See media mentions and research from 2020, 2021, an...

 The World Cultural Council (WCC) announced on June 15 that esteemed IPR statistician and methodology researcher Larry Hedges will receive the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education on...

This month’s new research covers studies examining how water insecurity relates to food insecurity, the connection between low socioeconomic status and responses to immediate rewards, and&#16...

Yale social psychologist Jennifer Richeson discusses her research examining the myth of racial progress. The abolition of slavery, repeal of Jim Crow laws, and election of the first Black president...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates how pre-pregnancy maternal mental health impacts children, federal agencies with substantial personnel change in the Trump era, and a n...

 Protestors breached the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2020 over the results of the 2020 election. A record-breaking 17 million Americans bought one or more guns in 2020, and the gun-buy...

  Approximately one billion people, or one in seven, around the globe suffer from a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. Despite billions of dollars being spent...

  Water insecurity is often considered a problem in low-income countries, but new research is showing that many high-income nations around the globe struggle with water, too. Recent survey dat...

  Over the 2018–19 school year, Chicago began expanding free, full-day prekindergarten (pre-K) for 3- and 4-year-olds through Chicago Public Schools (CPS). IPR developmental psychologist...

 Attendees came from 40 different government, NGOs, development banks, and academic institutions in Latin America, as well as from U.N. entities. Access to adequate, safe, and reliable water i...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates academic testing and genetic factors in autism, how childhood adversity is linked with health among potential parents, and educators' b...

  It’s April, another Earth Day has arrived, with another alarming report on the state of our climate and our planet. In March, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Clima...

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported rising COVID-19 vaccination rates since the start of the pandemic, but these data might give an overly optimistic view of h...

How does Americans’ understanding of racial disparities, including perceptions of the wealth gap between Black and White Americans, affect the nation’s path to racial progress? Yale so...

  When IPR social policy expert Sally Nuamah attended a Chicago community meeting in 2012 about potentially shutting down a school, she heard residents discuss the closure like it was “l...

Harvard economist Raj Chetty (right) takes questions from the audience about big data and upward mobility with IPR's Diane Schanzenbach, who moderated the discussion. In his IPR Distinguished Publi...

Behavioral scientist and IPR associate Linda Teplin was elected a 2022 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of her “distinguished contribut...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines a meaningful measure of food policy progress, how liberals and conservatives engage with social media posts from elites, and effects o...

  Nearly three years into the pandemic, young adults are returning to their pre-pandemic social lives. Yet a mental health crisis among America’s young adults persists, according to a re...

 IPR experts Emma Adam, Terri Sabol, and Jonathan Guryan spoke on a panel about the impact of the COVID-19 panel on children and adolescents moderated by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (seated fr...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines whether food security can improve mental health, the legacies of apartheid and psychiatric illness, and whether infants exposed to sign lan...

 Rebecca Blank, shown here in her IPR office, was an IPR fellow. Rebecca M. Blank, who was poised to become Northwestern’s 17th president this summer, died on February 17 near Madison, W...

 Twitter's headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, the platform has experienced several tumultuous months under his leadership. His controversial dec...

 A store in Portland, Oregon, advertises that it accepts SNAP. Since April 2020, states have been able to award Emergency Allotment, or EA, payments to SNAP recipients to supplement the formu...

 Illinois State Senator Cristina Pacione-Zayas spoke about how crucial it is for participants to come together to stop gun violence at the symposium on community violence intervention on Dec. ...

 In the 2020 election, a record number of Republican women won congressional elections around the country. Yet Republican women still represented a small minority of GOP politicians in the 117...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines the connection between eviction rates and adverse pregnancy outcomes, the association between childhood risk and cardiovascular risk, and ...

 It was a dorm that led IPR postdoctoral fellow Lauren Tighe to a career in academic research. During her first year at the University of Michigan, she shared how becoming part of a research c...

How can we give children from all backgrounds a better chance of succeeding? Harvard economist Raj Chetty will discuss his efforts to study the science of economic opportunity using big data&#82...

Stay up-to-date with the latest IPR faculty media mentions concerning COVID-19 as well as other IPR news related to the coronavirus in 2022. See media mentions and research from 2020 and 2021. The ...

 In March 2022, Ukrainians go to the Lviv railway station to escape the country after Russia's invasion. As the war in Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary in February 2023, American news co...

  A survey of American adults found that nearly half reported having been infected with COVID-19 at least once, with 35% saying they have tested positive more than once. The report also reveal...

Over the past year, the articles that were among IPR’s most read took stock of unfolding current events—from spreading misinformation to the midterm elections, abortion politics, racia...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty explores Black girl space, when citizens engage in corruption, and the gun spike during the pandemic. It also examines the link between drug d...

  Brookings scholar Richard Reeves (left) speaks to IPR Director and economist Diane Schanzenbach on November 3.  Men are falling behind women in school, in the workplace, and in other ke...

IPR scholars Stephanie Edgerly, Laurel Harbridge-Yong, and Erik Nisbet (left to right) share their insights during the 2022 midterm elections panel.  In opening IPR’s 2022 midterm elect...

  IPR social demographer Christine Percheski (front left) and some of IPR's 2022 summer undergraduate research assistants take a photo break during a training session.  How might spouses ...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty explores racial and ethnic differences in eating duration and meal timing, whether education protects against job loss during an economic downturn,...

Katherine Amato, Matthew Easterday, Steven Epstein, Diane Schanzenbach, Onnie Rogers, Vijay Mittal, Eli Finkel (from top left going clockwise) Seven IPR scholars were selected for Northwester...

Countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa have experienced severe droughts and unprecedented floods in the last year. How are individuals in these and other regions faring in terms of their abi...

  Donald Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. On August 8, 2022, the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to search for classified docume...

Raphael Bostic discusses inflation, the legacy of racism in the economy, and more at IPR's Distinguished Lecture.  Rising rents, distressing dinner tabs, climbing gas prices, and ot...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty explores racial inequalities in birth weight among college-educated mothers, improving generalizability in academic studies, and how social psychol...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker delivers his inaugural address on January 14, 2019, in Springfield. Twenty-eight governors, 15 Republicans and 13 Democrats, will be up for re-election in November, and a ...

Between 2021 and 2031, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects U.S. employment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, jobs will rise by nearly 11%—double the rate for...

IPR's new fellows (from left to right): Economist Elisa Jácome, African American Studies scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and political scientist Brian Libgober. Three new fellows joined Nort...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates how reflecting on positive events influences academic achievement, the effects of protective caregiving practices on mental healt...

  IPR statistician Larry Hedges leads a training during the Improving Evaluations of R&D in STEM Education Summer Institute. How can researchers conduct small education studies when large...

Raphael Bostic, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, will deliver the 2022 Fall Distinguished Public Policy Lecture at Northwestern University’s Inst...

A group of protestors rallied in support of Amazon workers and unionization on January 15, 2022, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Workers at Starbucks, Chipotle, Amazon, REI, Trader Joe’s, and...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in the ...

   In 1989, pro-choice demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion remained one of the most polarizin...

Research suggests that Mexican American adolescents may be at greater risk for major depression and suicide than White teenagers. In an effort to help their teens, some Mexican American parents &#...

  Our lives depend on water, but climate change, population growth, and poor governance can all jeopardize our water security. One of the goals of sustainable development is to ensure equal di...

  Many Americans take tap water for granted. Water bills are often less expensive compared to people’s other bills, and tap water has been a part of most Americans’ lives since the...

A worker fills out information for the 2020 Census.  In 1997, computer scientist Latanya Sweeney was able to identify then-Massachusetts Governor William Weld from anonymous hospital records a...

  After the Supreme Court’s June 24 landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, how did the announcement shift public opinion? And co...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines the effects of social support on inflammation in high school students, functional neurological disorder's link to trauma, mental health, a...

  For years research has shown that owning a gun increases the risk of suicide—a prospect that has only been amplified with the rise in gun ownership during the COVID-19 pandemic. In one...

SIBASS participants practiced biological approaches to research, such as learning how to draw blood. Do poverty and racism affect your health? If so, what are the best methods for measuring the eff...

  Residents visit a memorial to the victims of the July 4, 2022, shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Mass shootings have been on the rise in the U.S.—not just in schools like the U...

Susan Dynarski holds up her copy of “Keeping College Affordable” by Morton Schapiro and Michael McPherson, sharing how it informed her research, as fellow panelists Eric Bettinger (far...

From left: Diane Schanzenbach, Eric Bettinger, Susan Dynarski, Sarah Turner, and Jesse Rothstein discuss how their research can inform policy around college access. IPR Director and economist Diane...

From left: David Figlio, Adam Gamoran, Bridget Long, Sandy Baum, and Michael McPherson address what colleges can do to increase access and student success. While the first panel of the May 10 ...

Morton Schapiro (left) and James Kvaal cover some of higher education’s top headlines. Two panels on higher education research and practice set up the May 10 “College Access and Success...

  Can your behavior as a child influence your income as an adult? New research by IPR economist Ofer Malamud and Robert Kaestner of the University of Chicago shows that it can. The study, publ...

Three IPR scholars earned notable recognition for their policy-focused research. IPR economist Kirabo Jackson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and IPR psychologist Alice E...

IPR political scientist Tabitha Bonilla presents on “The Role of Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Voter Decision-Making” at the CAB 2022 Conference. On May 6, nearly 80 f...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates how supply disruptions led to a drop in community college enrollment during the pandemic, if and why fathers spend less on their daugh...

New research can help officials identify hidden networks of officers engaging in misconduct and criminal behavior within police organizations. The study shows that police misconduct is a group phe...

Legislation currently before Congress, the Levering Integrated Networks in Communities (LINC) to Address Social Needs Act, is meant to better connect social service and health organizations via pu...

Five IPR faculty have recently been recognized in their fields for the impact of their policy-driven research. Their studies span a range of topics, including COVID-19 infections and antibodies, p...

Assassination. Secret air pollution. Draught. Police shootings. Unexpected and beyond the control of individuals, these outside forces can “shock” people in ways beyond just a psycholo...

As the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) approaches, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) convened a committee to review current practi...

  This month’s new research from IPR faculty explores trends in gun violence in Cook County, Illinois, between 2018–20, whether social relationships can improve students' academic ...

In January 2020, the U.S. labor market reached a milestone: Women held more paid jobs than men for only the second time in American history. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, plunging the U.S. econo...

  This month’s new research from IPR faculty investigates the role of systemic inflammation in the impact of trauma on mental health, how school shootings affect elections, and the assoc...

  How have parents’ likelihood of vaccinating their kids changed since vaccines were authorized for 5- to 15-year-olds last year? A recent national survey reveals that parents of childre...

  In 2014, Black Lives Matter (BLM) became a political movement after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri that would go on to shift public and political conversations about race. ...

  A new report shows that African women who migrate to France have more children than French-born women—but not as many as women in their home countries. The migrant women’s use of...

On June 6, 2020, people gathered on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia to protest the murder of George Floyd. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, millions of Americans po...

  This month’s new research from IPR faculty explores the prevalence of adverse childhood experience of students in Chicago Public Schools, the connection between parents' education and ...

Andrew Papachristos welcomed guests to an N3 symposium on the science and practice of street outreach in December. The Harry Frank Guggenheim (HFG) Foundation named IPR sociologist Andrew Papachris...

  Can migrating to a very different society affect a woman’s contraceptive use? A new study in Demography by IPR sociologist Julia Behrman and her colleagues shows that it can. She and h...

  At the Republican National Convention in 1988, presidential candidate George H. W. Bush told fellow Republicans that he would not allow Congress to raise taxes, saying “Read my lips, n...

“Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” President Joe Biden asked the country on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurr...

This month’s new research from IPR faculty examines whether the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK) affected birth outcomes, how Black residents’ political behavior change...

More than a quarter of those surveyed remain unsure if N95s offer more protection than cloth masks. Up to 6% of adult COVID-19 cases are not being counted due to the use of at-home test kits. Of ...

On January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. One year after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, a new survey finds that 52% of Ameri...

  In June 2021, community members at a North Carolina school board meeting express their support and opposition to teaching critical race theory. Over the last few years, Critical Race Theory...

In November 2021, children in the Province of British Columbia received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Will parents vaccinate their kids as pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations rise ac...

  Former president Trump gives a White House coronavirus update briefing on April 13, 2020.  Competent elected leaders are often successful in improving the lives of those they serve, but...

Stay up-to-date with the latest IPR faculty media mentions concerning COVID-19 as well as other IPR news related to the coronavirus in 2021. See media mentions and research from 2020 on the followi...

  In October 2021, community members attend a school board meeting in Burlington, North Carolina. Conflicts around COVID-19 restrictions and teaching critical race theory have increased attent...

  Parents who are Democrats, college-educated, city dwellers, and older (over age 35) were more likely to say their 5- to 11-year-olds were getting vaccinated over those who were not, accordin...

N3 executive director Soledad McGrath moderates the final panel on the future of street outreach during N3's 2021 Symposium on Dec. 8, 2021.  At the end of November, Chicago’s homicide ...

This month's new research from IPR faculty examines how news consumption in Russia shapes belief in COVID-19 misinformation, mentor strategies in emerging fields, and measuring children's experien...

Snapshots from IPR's most-read 2021 articles (captions below) As the COVID-19 crisis continued to ravage the U.S. and the globe, 2021 saw a January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the inaugurat...

Over 1 million students are currently in the midst of applying to college, and for good reason. Research shows that college typically confers many critical lifelong benefits on those who attend&#8...

A new survey of more than 1,200 U.S. college students shows those in colleges with mask and vaccine mandates were more likely to approve of their universities’ handling of COVID-19 than thos...

This summer, the SURA program launched with a Zoom training about campus research resources and best practices for being a research assistant led by IPR social demographer Christine Percheski. ...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers whether increased public K–12 school spending improves student outcomes, the threats facing Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Pro...

For over a decade, Americans’ approval of the way Congress handles its job has been well below 50%. Recent congressional sparring over previously bipartisa...

On October 26, the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee voted to endorse use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on 5- to 11-year-olds. If approved, this could set the sta...

This month's new research from IPR faculty examines stress and high-stakes testing among students from low-income backgrounds, the disproportionate school punishment of Black students and their li...

While 29% of Americans are still unvaccinated, nearly two-thirds of this group (19%) are concerned enough about the spread of COVID-19 to regularly wear a mask—and the No. 1 reason for a lar...

As coronavirus cases continue to surge around the nation, President Biden has taken a harder stance against those unwilling to vaccinate by issuing vaccine mandates. Recent polling shows that most...

As the world struggles to stop a global pandemic and reel in climate change, globally comparable information about water insecurity is crucial for action. A new study by IPR anthropologist Sera Yo...

 IPR associate Seth Stein, Northwestern PhD student Molly Gallahue, and former IPR graduate research assistant Leah Salditch at the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California.  A...

Even before COVID, childcare was a challenge. The pandemic’s swift economic plunge only made it worse, closing down childcare centers, shedding workers, increasing food insecurity, and turni...

New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) finds that Americans, even the nation’s wealthiest, have shorter lives when compared with Europeans. At t...

This month's new research from IPR faculty investigates how adolescents respond to racism on social media, whether a family's attitude toward gender impacts a girl's math score, and the impacts of...

  This spring, IPR graduate research assistant Sheridan Fuller received two competitive awards for his research, one of which was the Presidential Fellowship, Northwestern’s highest hono...

Street outreach workers, part of a Communities Partnering 4 Peace organization, serve meals to neighborhood residents. Individuals’ gun victimization dropped by nearly 20% after 18 months of ...

Like many parts of the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted child care as 60% of programs nationwide were forced to close in spring 2020. It left parents and caregivers with no or few child ca...

How long do the immunity benefits of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines last? A new study by IPR researchers biological anthropologist Thomas McDade, postdoctoral fellow Amelia Sancilio, and professor of...

Chicago CRED street outreach workers connect with at-risk men in Chicago to prevent gun violence. After a near record increase in 2020, levels of gun violence in Chicago remain stubbornly ele...

  This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how racial discrimination gets under the skin, the case for teaching preregistration in graduate school, and improving work-related social i...

  Despite having one of the largest economies in the world, India lags behind many countries around issues of gender equality. Female labor participation in India dropped to 20% over the last ...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in the ...

Following the Surgeon General’s July 15 advisory on health misinformation and social media, President Joe Biden remarked that Facebook and other social media platforms are “killing peo...

  As the highly transmissible Delta variant pushes up cases of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. to alarming levels, President Joe Biden and other top administration officials have taken t...

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation Pandemic Response Policy Research Fund at Northwestern University is funding eight projects to inform and advance future pandemic policy responses, three of which ...

Living a longer life may be tied to how much money you have made by midlife. In the first wealth and longevity study to incorporate siblings and twin pair data, the researchers, led by IPR postdoc...

Children under 12 may be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines by September or October, but will parents vaccinate their children? New survey results from a consortium of universities, including Northwes...

Rob Greenwald, a long-time IPR colleague and founding executive director of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), died of natural causes on June 26. Greenwald, who was 60, b...

As states reopen and lift COVID-19 safety measures, a new survey of more than 185,000 people from all 50 states shows another sign of improvement—levels of social isolation are fal...

  Before the COVID crisis, there was the opioid crisis. Though the pandemic has grabbed the headlines, Americans continue to die of opioids at alarming rates: 136 Americans die every day from ...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how opioid use impacts the hospital system in Illinois, predicting homeowners' gender, and designing a five-question index to measure women's agen...

Even before infants can roll over in their cribs, research has shown that listening to language boosts their cognition. For infants as young as 3 months, listening to human speech supports their a...

IPR social policy expert Sally Nuamah recently received two prestigious awards that recognize her contributions to research and activism in education, gender, and race this spring. In April, Nuama...

Helping someone with their homework or running errands for a homebound senior are examples of social support that have been associated with better mental health and wellbeing, as well as better ph...

Protestors gather in Graham, North Carolina, in January 2021 to protest evictions and call for housing security.  Is America heading out of a pandemic lockdown into a housing lockout? On one s...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers the effect of exposure to immigrants on the academic outcomes of U.S.-born students, how the gut microbiome can improve health inequities, and whe...

IPR political scientist James Druckman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign assistant professor of political science Aleks Ksiazkiewicz, and IPR political scientist Mary McGrath at CAB 2021...

 IPR biological anthropologist Thomas McDade was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two of the nation’s most prestigious sc...

“During COVID, hunger has swelled,” IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach told the members of the U.S. Representatives House Rules Committee on April 28 during a virtual three-hour ...

With vaccination rates increasing and states reopening, many are hopeful that the pandemic is finally nearing its end. Despite the optimism around the pandemic’s progress, a national survey ...

Chicago’s skyline, taken from the city’s East Village/Ukrainian Village neighborhood. A two-year-old program in Chicago designed to change policing and ensure communities have a voice i...

  As more Americans receive the COVID-19 vaccine and communities begin re-opening, many remain divided about whether proof of vaccination, or “vaccine passports,” should be require...

  Farmers and agricultural researchers discuss a composting technique during training using the participatory Farming for Change curriculum. A groundbreaking study finds that an innovative pra...

 IPR graduate research assistant Abby Smith was named as one of the Center for Data and Computing’s inaugural Rising Stars in Data Science. The center, based at the University of Chicag...

  New survey results from a consortium of universities that includes Northwestern, Harvard, Northeastern, and Rutgers reveal a slight increase in Americans who support vaccination requirements...

  Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine arrives at Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, New York A new survey from a research consortium that includes Northwestern reveals that 74% of respond...

  In 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist shot and killed nine Black Americans during a Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Stories of the shooting flooded media ...

  Children playing in Centennial Park Playground in Howard County, MD. How can organizations in different sectors work together to improve educational outcomes? A Northwestern study shows city...

More than 30 IPR faculty have been recognized as being among the top 2% most cited academics in their respective fields, according to a database published in PLOS Biology by Stanford University re...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers the spread of COVID-19 in metropolitan areas in the fall of 2020, Chicago students' self-reported risk behaviors, and improving high school counse...

  Former faculty fellow and director Margaret (Margo) T. Gordon, 81, died on April 1 in Seattle. A groundbreaking scholar and accomplished administrator, Gordon became IPR’s third direct...

 An assay plate contains mailed-in samples of reconstituted blood. As the U.S. rushes to vaccinate Americans to prevent a wider outbreak of COVID-19, the FDA has currently authorized three vac...

Since January, more U.S. healthcare workers have said they are ready to get vaccinated, with rates of vaccine hesitancy dropping from 37% to 29%, according to a new survey from a research consorti...

  Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is one of five Republican governors who has higher approval ratings from Democrats than Republicans.  How much Americans approve—or disapprove—...

  While coronavirus vaccines are yet to be approved for children, public health officials worry that the increasing numbers of parents skeptical of vaccinating their children for any disease c...

A student sits behind a protective shield inside a school classroom in October 2020.    How are students faring as U.S. schools reopen after being shuttered due to the pandemic? Man...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers the role of social-emotional development in students' lives, policy and science during the pandemic, and whether bipartisan policymakers are more ...

A Northwestern study finds that messages about the positive power of a student’s background can support the achievement and wellbeing of marginalized high school or college students. The fin...

   A Des Moines public school employee gets a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on February 6. In his March 11 primetime address, President Biden pledged that all adults over the age of ...

IPR economist Jonathan Guryan released a study with the University of Chicago Education Lab that demonstrates individualized, intensive—or “high-dosage”—tutoring can double...

  As a child, Stephanie Edgerly remembers observing her mom engage in politics and current events through media outlets like the “Today” show, “The View,” and the Natio...

Protesters in Kansas City, Kansas, call for measures to ensure equity in policing in July 2020.  On his first day as president, Joe Biden signed an executive order that the federal government...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how good relationships with parents during childhood can be a buffer to the common cold later in life, how experiences earlier in life, such as br...

  A doctor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, MD., gets vaccinated on Dec. 14, 2020. Women working in healthcare reported more resistance getting a vaccine than men...

  Two-thirds of respondents (67%), whether students or parents, say they are concerned about the quality of K–12 learning during the pandemic, according to a new national survey of more ...

  President Trump supporters carry guns at a United We Stand & Patriots March in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 12 to protest shutdowns. Amid the protests and turbulence of 2020, A...

  An employee of the Metropolitan Transit Authority receives a COVID-19 vaccine at New York City's Javits Center on January 13. As President Joe Biden promises to vaccinate more than 100 ...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers some of the real causes of the opioid crisis, how teachers can humanize relationships with Black students, identity frames and support for Black L...

How did an English major working on a dairy farm end up as a pediatrician? IPR associate Craig Garfield began by deciding that he would prefer to help people rather than cows. Going from English m...

More than 240,000 U.S. students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine shooting, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. In a new working paper, IPR economists M...

2020 was a year in which we saw the unrelenting spread and devastation of the coronavirus, George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter protests, a turbulent presidential election amidst entrenched political divisiveness, misinformation and disinformation, growing disparities, deadly gun violence, and a widening recession. Across IPR’s top content of year, seven key research themes emerged: food insecurity, poverty, racial disparities, policing and violence, politics, education, and, of course, the pandemic itself.

  A CRED mentor and participant shake hands. With gun violence at a 20-year high in Chicago, a new report by IPR’s Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3) examines a promisin...

  A protestor shows a bullet casing found at the scene of a drive-by shooting in Chicago, 2016. At the same time that Chicago was battling a global health epidemic in 2020, it also experienced...

Stay up-to-date with the latest IPR faculty media mentions concerning COVID-19 as well as other IPR news related to the coronavirus in 2020. The University has been sending out official commun...

A new survey reveals the dismal scope of many Americans’ economic struggles as Congress approved an eleventh-hour $900 billion pandemic relief package before their remaining benefits expired...

  An evicted family's belongings line the street in Detroit. The app provides information on seven economic indicators, including on missed mortgage or rent payments.  During the COVID-19...

Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris and President-Elect Joe Biden share the stage at a victory rally in Wilmington, Del., on November 7. As President-Elect Joe Biden continues to fill out his incomi...

“My mother, like most of our parents, really emphasized the power and the value of school and education as a mechanism for trying to improve our life chances,” said IPR social policy e...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers the connection between mortality effects and health insurance choice, monitoring children's internet use, the punishment of Black girls in school,...

Boston protestors offer their support for the lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University in October 2018. In November, an appellate court ruled on the latest challenge to th...

  When the coronavirus shut down the economy, U.S. working women were hit with what has been called the "shecession": They lost jobs in greater numbers than in previous downturns and working m...

  As the United States waits to see how high already grim rates of COVID-19 will go after Thanksgiving, a new survey shows that the states with the lowest levels of social distancing behaviors...

Despite differing opinions about whether shutdowns have been effective, new survey results show 6 in 10 Americans support more restrictive measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Following the...

  More Illinoisans are wearing masks, like one of the Art Institute of Chicago's iconic guardian lions, but have fallen short on other behaviors that would help prevent the spread of the coron...

IPR economist Hannes Schwandt, a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy, was named one of Capital magazine’s “Young Elite - the Top 40 under 40” this year in the ...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how parent and adolescent stress influence executive functioning in urban youth, principals relationships with parents, how the internet can help ...

 Biden-Harris supporters in Washington, D.C. celebrate the news on November 7. Four days after Election Day on November 7, major news organizations called it for Joe Biden. On November 9, the ...

The next administration will face more than the COVID-19 infection in its battle against the pandemic: It will also have to face an unprecedented national mental health emergency. A new survey of ...

Grocery shoppers wait in line during the pandemic in Queens, New York. Using anonymous cell phone data to map the hourly movements of 98 million people to places like restaurants, gyms, and churche...

In Virginia, wearing a mask is required in polling stations like this one in Fairfax County on November 3, 2020. How have Americans’ opinions changed about the government responses to COVID-1...

Voters wait in line at the start of early voting in Evanston, Ill., on October 20, 2020. As the nation heads into Election Day, a survey of more than 20,000 American voters on the most important pr...

Political polarization between U.S. parties has only escalated since Newt Gingrich’s partisan attacks against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. But for the first time, contempt for the ot...

As the fall semester gets underway against the backdrop of a national reckoning with racial and social inequality in America, new research sheds light on an apparent conflict between women’s...

  Stress from COVID-19—along with stress related to healthcare, the economy, racism and the presidential election—is seriously threatening the mental health of our country, par...

An international study is one of the first to reveal how those who set out to collect drinking water in low- and middle-income countries can face serious injury. Co-authors IPR anthropologist Sera...

  With less than two weeks to go until November 3, the 2020 election will be historic on many levels—from casting votes during a pandemic and ongoing protests around racial injustice to ...

  Older Americans and Republicans are more likely to share fake news websites about COVID-19 on Twitter, new research shows. But at the same time, older people are less likely to believe misin...

During this socially volatile moment in the U.S., is there a connection between having been arrested and belief in the “American First” ideology espoused by President Trump? A new stud...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how therapists can help with unexplained illness, which groups are most likely to be misinformed about COVID-19, and the link between household wa...

A woman hands a COVID-19 testing kit to a vehicle at a testing center at the Walmart Supercenter in Elizabethville, PA.  The average turnaround time for COVID-19 nasal swab tests decreased fr...

On October 14, the Mindset Scholars Network announced the launch of the Data Archive for Interdisciplinary Research on Learning, or DAIRL, a new data and paper repository, that has been desig...

Growing up in Germany, IPR economist Hannes Schwandt became curious about what underlies happiness—peoples’ health, their children, their well-being. He was also intrigued by the study...

IPR director and economist Diane Schanzenbach worked with undergraduate research assistant Natalie Tomeh on Zoom this summer to study food insecurity and employment.  The Institute for P...

The map shows average food insecurity rates for April 23–July 21 for all respondents. See a larger version of the map. During the COVID-19 crisis, rates of food insecurity have soared. Accor...

A new survey indicates why Americans might see President Trump ahead at the end of election night on November 3, but then see Biden pull ahead and declared the winner by the end the week. The rese...

Several members of Northwestern's anthropology department, former and current, are among a diverse group of scholars who contributed to a special issue of The American Journal of Human Biology. Th...

In the face of stalled talks on a new coronavirus relief package, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a largely symbolic $2.2 trillion one on October 1. A new national survey finds 80% of Americans support passage of a new relief bill. The survey, conducted between September 4 and 27, asked more than 20,000 Americans for their opinions on the next COVID-19 relief bill. Congress has passed four COVID-19 relief packages totaling $3.4 trillion since the start of the pandemic in the United States, including the latest, the CARES Act, on March 27. The strong support for a fifth bill cuts across party affiliation and race.

In September, the Northwestern Neighborhood and Network Initiative (N3), housed within IPR, delivered a report to the City of Evanston reviewing its use of force policy and data for its police dep...

  If you get your news from social media, you are more likely to fall for misinformation about coronavirus conspiracies, risk factors, and preventative treatments, according to the latest surv...

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan visited tutors and students in the SAGA program at Bogan High School in Chicago. SAGA Education, an intensive math tutoring program, has been p...

A team of street outreach workers with Communities Partnering 4 Peace helps to manage three epidemics in Chicago. Chicago’s more than 180 street outreach workers, who work to prevent gun vio...

  A vigil in June 2020 for George Floyd and others who have lost their lives to police brutality.  The protests that followed the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis polic...

  Francesca Gaiba (left) presents a gift to the Williams Institute's Jocelyn Samuels at a joint IPR-ISGMH lecture in 2019.  In August, cultural anthropologist Francesca Gaiba joined IPR a...

The White House Task Force takes questions from reporters early on the pandemic in March 2020.  How much do Americans trust politicians, organizations, and others to “do the right thing...

  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saw his approval rating drop significantly in the latest survey results by IPR political scientist James Druckman looking at Americans' attitudes about the coro...

Despite the tragic and sudden rise in the number of young homicide victims in Chicago in 2020, the number of very young homicide victims has decreased sharply since the 1990s, according to new res...

Armando Leal Jr. Middle School's staff in San Antonio, Texas, distribute food to drivers picking up meals for their children.  The COVID-19 health emergency has led to a sharp economic slowdo...

 At a mass distribution site next to the Alamodome in Texas, recipients receive food from the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service Disaster Household Distributions and the San Antonio Food Bank. ...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in...

Doctors and epidemiologists have continually emphasized the importance of handwashing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but still people across the globe struggle to access the clean water necessary t...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers whether personality traits are associated with smoking and drinking during pregnancy, how retail health clinics affect emergency room use, private...

According to the latest results from an ongoing national survey of attitudes about COVID-19, most Americans do not believe it is safe for K-12 students to return to in-person classes th...

Even for infants just beginning to speak their first words, the way an object is named guides infants’ encoding, representation, and memory for that object, according to new research by IPR ...

As communities across America have gathered in recent months to protest police abuses, researchers are taking a close look at how, where, and why racial disparities in policing occur. IPR sociolog...

When Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P) launched a new partnership among several leading outreach organizations aimed at reducing gun violence in Chicago, some resistance was expected. In many ...

  In February 2020, President Donald Trump spoke at a "Keep America Great" rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Every Republican president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower seemed to act out the same ...

Researcher examines a COVID-19 test to find out results at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories.  According to the latest results from an ongoing national survey ...

  IPR labor economist Kirabo (“Bo”) Jackson has been honored with the David N. Kershaw Award by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). The award recogni...

COVID-19 took center stage at the 14th annual Chicago Area Social and Political Behavior Workshop, hosted virtually on July 10. “We altered the program to focus on COVID-19 and matters of in...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how parental depression and incarceration each affect children, how the public views partisanship, family sizes in France, narratives about gender...

IPR sociologist Beth Redbird's map of racial disparities in arrests. As the volume of information produced in the world increases every day, more data than ever is at the public’s fingertips...

IPR associate examines decision making and how research can become effective policy.

A middle school in Arlington, Virginia provides families with meals during COVID-19, particularly for those eligible for free- or reduced-priced meals. During the COVID-19 crisis, food insecurity ...

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey at a rally in 2018. The latest results from an ongoing survey of Americans’ opinions about the COVID-19 pandemic show that confidence in executive leadership is d...

 District 25 community ambassadors meet with CPD officers. In January 2019, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in collaboration with the Policing Project at New York University School of Law ...

  Only 30% of Chicago’s residents are African American, yet as of late June they comprise 44% of those who have died from COVID-19, according to Chicago’s Department of Public Heal...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers how bullying affects the brain, the effects of increasing private school choice vouchers on public school students, how feelings of uncertaint...

Kit developed by Northwestern researchers to collect a finger stick dried blood spot. Northwestern University researchers have received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) ...

Experts have begun to refer to a “learning crisis” in the developing world, where many of the poorest nations’ poorest children leave the school system without basic literacy or ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a difficult dilemma for policymakers as they weigh the cost of protecting public health versus opening the economy. IPR health psychologists Edith Chen and Greg Mi...

Volunteers arrive to distribute food at the San Antonio Food Bank in Texas.  The COVID-19 crisis has not impacted everywhere in the U.S. equally, and to evaluate this as demonstrated by ...

The wealth gaps between black and white families with children, and between Hispanic and black families, have widened since the Great Recession in 2007–09, even though the long-time gap betw...

According to the latest results from an ongoing survey of Americans’ opinions about the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans’ trust is fraying in their institutions’ ability to respond &...

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, researchers are reporting findings of randomized trials comparing standard care with care augmented by experimental drugs. The trials have small sample sizes, ...

Recent news stories have highlighted the racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths nationally and locally in Chicago, with many noting that the “great equalizer” has been far from equal. B...

People wait in line outside a food pantry at St. Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Queens.  IPR Director and economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach has studied food insecurity f...

A majority of Americans (60%) support efforts to make it easier to vote by mail in the upcoming November election, including majorities in 46 states, according to the latest report from an ongoing...

On May 1, Soledad Adrianzén McGrath (WCAS 98) joined the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative, or N3, as its first executive director. McGrath, who returns to Northwestern where she...

  How will the coronavirus affect pregnant women and their babies? What can be learned from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and seasonal influenza? Studies show that if a woman gets the flu duri...

A majority of Americans (60%) continue to prefer that the country wait at least four weeks before reopening, according to a new survey of more than 20,000 Americans between May 2 and 15. But parti...

A man assists with traffic control at the Chesterfield Food bank.  The COVID Impact Survey also collected representative information for a select set of states and metropolitan areas. The tab...

A member of the National guard helps at a food bank in Ohio.  In their May 18 report, IPR Director and economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and research analyst Abigail Pitts continue to moni...

The COVID Impact Survey also collected representative information for a select set of states and metropolitan areas. These data allow IPR Director and economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and rese...

Food bank in Olympia, Washington.   The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted lives in a manner unprecedented in modern times, but for none more so than low-income working families with children. Unem...

An unprecedented challenge like the COVID-19 pandemic calls for not just interdisciplinary collaboration, but for scholars to reach out across communities and pool their resources to better unders...

Unrest, confusion, and anxiety are growing around the country as policymakers determine how best to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a Nature Human Behaviour article, more than 40 social scien...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers ethnic and socioeconomic identities in college, whether voters are biased against female political candidates, the motivation behind public service...

An assay plate contains samples of reconstituted blood collected from a finger prick that are ready for analysis. As antibody testing ramps up across the country, a team of Northwestern University...

  As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, with the U.S. now leading the world in reported cases, an international team of leading social scientists came together to analyze what the soci...

 In medical school, psychiatrist and IPR associate Crystal T. Clark found herself torn between two passions: psychiatry, and obstetrics and gynecology. Rather than make a difficult choice, sh...

IPR faculty Edith Chen, Mary Pattillo, James Spillane, Teresa Woodruff, and Jennifer Richeson were elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences  in April.   Five of the Institute...

Children who experience trauma, abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction are at increased risk of having heart disease as adults, according to a new study by community health scholar and IPR associa...

  As COVID-19 continues to spread in the U.S. and around the globe, its effects have been wide-ranging and abrupt, throwing untold tens of millions out of work, shutting down societies and eco...

Three IPR fellows spoke at a university-wide March forum on diversity-related issues in developmental science, presenting their own research and new frameworks on topics including children’s social awareness of racial issues and racial disparities in school expulsions.

In her new book Rejecting Compromise, IPR political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong and her colleagues find that one of the key predictors of rejecting compromise was the perception that vote...

  Students in IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol's class, including undergraduate Alan Perez (center), made policy recommendations before  the Illinois governor's office abou...

New York Times reporter Jason DeParle spoke about his immersive reporting on global migration and its impact on one family at Northwestern University. In 2018, remittances to low- and middle- inco...

This month's new research from IPR faculty covers nutrition in pregnancy, women’s empowerment and child nutrition, effects of grade-retention policies, polarization and democratic norms, the ...

IPR sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa found that anger and optimism for the future helped those with a criminal record resist stigma.  An estimated 77 million Americans, or as many as 1 in 3, hav...

Climate change has implications for everything from immigration to agricultural policy, but its most immediate impact is on the daily lives of people experiencing its effects. In a recent working ...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.   Politics, Institutions, and Public Policy  How Anger in Protest Movements Can Backfire The past decade of American life has be...

IPR faculty Cynthia Coburn and Kirabo Jackson were elected to the National Academy of Education in February.   IPR faculty experts Kirabo Jackson and Cynthia Coburn were two of 15 prominent e...

IPR economist Molly Schnell studies healthcare access, physician incentives, and mental health.

IPR sociologist Beth Redbird presented her research on what drives Native American poverty on Jan. 29.  Across the United States, 1 in 3 Native Americans are living in poverty, with a median ...

Northwestern's football team takes the field at their opening home game on September 14. Many of the players in this year’s Super Bowl were, at one point, college football stars. Top-divisio...

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, IPR economist Charles Manski and his colleagues apply econometric analysis to improve prediction of transplant success. Similar analysis could also benefit other types of organ transplants.

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty. Click on the study to read more.  The Evolution of Human Trafficking Messaging in the United States by Tabitha Bonilla and Cecilia...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.   Politics, Institutions, and Public Policy  The Evolution of Human Trafficking Messaging in the United States Human traffickin...

In 2019, IPR’s most-read articles reflected a year of celebration, as IPR marked its 50th anniversary, and of commitment, as studies tackled many of the persistent problems that society has faced since IPR’s founding in 1968.

In a conversation hosted by IPR’s Statistics and Evidence-Based Policy and Practice (STEPP) Center, IPR associate Cynthia Coburn and Paul Goren, both of the School of Education and Social Policy (SESP), discussed the effort needed on all sides to help research work its way into the classroom.

In 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) after heated debate. The new law was designed to deter people from pursuing bankruptcy by making filin...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.  Social Disparities and Health How Culture and Identity Affect Risk-Taking Behavior  Different cultures have different attitudes abou...

IPR associate Sylvia Perry researches how attitudes and bias form and influence behavior looking at bias awareness, stereotypes of biracial Americans, and bias in medicine.

Janet Currie lectured on the importance of child health to long-term academic and labor outcomes.  If the Oxford Dictionary defines capital as “a valuable resource of a particular kind,&...

How does women’s fear of rape influence their behavior? Why did the ERA fail? What changes are women in the labor market making and how does their involvement affect them as mothers? IPR researchers studied these women’s issues, among many, in the first two decades.

From sexism in the workplace and gender attitudes to understanding women’s fear of rape and why the Equal Rights Amendment failed, IPR faculty have pioneered vital research on women’s ...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.  Social Disparities and Health Female Disadvantage in Under-Five Mortality in India In Indian family life infant sons are preferred to daug...

Ana Arjona presenting at a November 11 IPR colloquium. Having spent her career studying the local dynamics of conflict zones, political scientist and IPR associate Ana Arjona is now turning to inv...

Jordan Gans-Morse at the Marshall Center’s 2017 Black Sea-Eurasia Region Countering Corruption Seminar. (Marshall Center photo by Christine June) The last time Ukraine dominated the global n...

High school guidance counselors can have a significant impact on whether young people pursue higher education. IPR researchers find adding resources to a high school counseling office can boost co...

In a media environment where comedians like Trevor Noah host late-night talk shows highlighting news headlines and combative pundits like Tucker Carlson provide commentary while discussing current...

The STEPP Center believes in “a scientific approach to transform the social world and a practice-driven approach to advance science,” and says its goal is to “improve lives through methodological innovation in research.” IPR statistician and co-founder Elizabeth Tipton says interdisciplinary cooperation will be key to STEPP’s overall contribution to the policy sphere.

IPR sociologist Julia Behrman got hooked on Africa when she conducted research in Senegal as an undergraduate looking at reproductive health services in 2005. The continent’s rich history an...

Image from Creative Commons. Pollsters blanket the country every two years, if not more, with the mission of taking American voters’ temperature on issues from healthcare to climate change. ...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.  Social Disparities and Health The Consequences of Foster Care Versus Institutional Care in Early Childhood on Adolescent Cardiometabolic a...

A new Northwestern University study finds that despite human’s close genetic relationship to apes, the human gut microbiome is more similar to that of Old World monkeys like baboons than to that of apes like chimpanzees.

The HWISE Scale could be transformative for understanding water insecurity.

IPR fellow Celeste Watkins-Hayes will discuss her new book "Remaking a Life" on October 2.  Steven Thrasher, the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting and an assist...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty.  Social Disparities and Health Supportive Parenting Protects Developing Brains from Poverty  In the United States, 40 percent of child...

 From left: Tabitha Bonilla, Sally Nuamah, and Molly Schnell.   Three new fellows are joining the Institute for Policy Research in September, adding their expertise in political scie...

Northwestern student Mary Okematti (left) discusses a project with IPR psychologist Sandra Waxman (right), who mentored Okematti during the SURA program over the summer.  Since 1998, the Insti...

IPR fellow Tabitha Bonilla studies public opinion and how communication influences voters and policies.  As a first-generation college student, IPR social policy expert Tabitha Bonilla th...

IPR econometrician Charles F. Manski applies the tools of economics to medical decision making, showing how uncertainty influences every stage, from risk analysis to treatment, and how this ca...

Image courtesy of Felton Davis, Flickr. The proliferation of calls to boycott companies from Amazon and CVS to Chick-fil-A and Nike has continued unabated in recent years, fueled in part by social...

Graduate Student Makeda Austin explains how to use a blood pressure machine during the SIBASS workshop.  Two IPR faculty-led trainings over the summer allowed more than 50 researchers from acr...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in...

Former IPR graduate research assistant Mollie McQuillan (standing), who worked with scholars in various disciplines while at the Institute, teaches an undergraduate class on gender identity, ...

IPR's Andrew Papachristos and George Wood show how leveraging the power of networks could help reduce gun violence in areas typically marked by high crime rates. A new Northwestern University stud...

Research may lay the foundation for group-based biases. If you were to meet two new people, and others seem to be more friendly toward one of those individuals, would that lead you to like that in...

IPR econometrician Charles F. Manski's work is deeply rooted in methodology, but inexorably tied to policy and motivated by real-world problems. A body of nearly 150 peer-reviewed articles and eig...

Northwestern's Sociology Department is home to the Problem-Solving Sociology Dissertation Proposal Development Workshop founded by IPR's Monica Prasad. Doctoral students in sociology from across th...

Rebellion, Love, Betrayal John Heinz, Owen L. Coon Professor Emeritus of Law and IPR faculty emeritus, has a new title to add to his many other distinguished honors: novelist.  Since his ret...

IPR's Elizabeth Tipton worked on a study looking at the academic benefits of an online program designed to help students develop a growth mindset. A groundbreaking study of more than 12,000 ninth...

IPR's Andrew Papachristos and his fellow researchers examined the records of more than 8,000 Chicago police officers named in multiple complaints from 2007 to 2015 to determine the role socia...

IPR's Edith Chen finds a link between strong family relationships and better asthma outcomes for children living in violent neighborhoods.  Positive family relationships might help youth...

Researchers investigated how gender stereotypes in the U.S. have evolved over seven decades. Good news for women—they are no longer regarded as less competent than men on average, according ...

For its 50th anniversary, IPR decided to look forward rather than back.  Held over June 6–7, the six panels of “IPR@50: The Next 50 Years of Research” investigated government...

From left: Greg Miller investigates the impact of social and biological environments on health outcomes with Christopher Kuzawa, Edith Chen, and Thomas McDade.  IPR health psychologist Greg Mi...

   Moderator Paul Goren (pictured below) pursued big-picture questions on community partnerships with, from left, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Penny Sebring, Lori Beaman, and David Figlio. &#8...

From left: Peter Slevin dug into the ailments of American democracy, and possible fixes, with with Rachel Davis Mersey, Laurel Harbridge-Yong, James Druckman, and Jennifer Richeson.  Subscri...

From left: Sarah Karp dissected government spending on key social policies with Kirabo Jackson, Monica Prasad, and Matthew Notowidigdo.  What do we know about U.S. government spending on key s...

From left: Odette Yousef asks panelists Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Jonathan Guryan, and Andrew Papachristos about the impact of unequal neighborhoods on their residents.  How much impact does envi...

Neighborhood Inequality: What Does the Research Tell Us? Inequality is pervasive and persistent, intersecting with issues of race, education, housing, and social status—to name but a few...

Matthew Desmond described how soaring housing costs and stagnant incomes are linked to a rise in U.S. evictions.  Many Americans believe that the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis was the last maj...

From left: IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach discussed the “arduous work” of policy measurement with Burton Weisbrod, Emma Adam, Bruce Spencer, and Sera Young.  “Polic...

IPR sociologist and African American studies researcher Celeste Watkins-Hayes looks at more than 100 women living with HIV/AIDS in her new book.   “If it weren’t for HIV,...

A new Northwestern University study has found evidence that there are some stereotypes that seem to be universally applied to biracial groups in the U.S.    Stereotypes often guide ...

IPR political scientist Chloe Thurston studies the intersection of politics and the economy through historical analysis.  Chloe Thurston never intended to study politics. As an undergradu...

IPR's Larry Hedges was named a Yidan Prize winner in 2018 and co-hosted the Yidan Prize Conference at Northwestern University on May 23–24.  IPR education researcher and statistician Lar...

Poverty leaves a mark on nearly 10 percent of the genes in the genome, finds IPR anthropologist Thomas McDade. A new Northwestern University study challenges prevailing understandings of genes...

A working paper by IPR's Hannes Schwandt finds "cheating" diesel car emissions are linked to lower birth weights for more than 38,600 newborns and to an increase in acute asthma in infants and ch...

Do some countries discriminate against racial minorities in the hiring process more than others? A new meta-analysis on hiring discrimination by IPR sociologist Lincoln Quillian and his c...

Variation in brain energy expenditure during childhood could be linked to obesity risk, finds IPR biological anthropologist Christopher Kuzawa. Weight gain occurs when an individual’s energy ...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty. Education Policy  The Impact of Refugees on Classmates’ Schooling The world today faces the largest refugee crisis since the end of W...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty. Performance Measurement and Rewards Overcoming Barriers to Safety Net Sign-Ups Why do people fail to sign up for social safety net programs like...

Cells to Society (C2S) launched in 2005 to understand how experiences shape biology. C2S also trains researchers in how to use biomarkers in studies (above the attendees and organizers of the 2011 ...

IPR faculty researchers are making progress in understanding mental health issues and potential policy implications. In a given year in the United States, 43.8 million people experience a mental he...

IPR associate Annette D'Onofrio studies how language defines our perceptions. Growing up in Minnesota, linguistics scholar and IPR associate Annette D’Onofrio was always attuned to the nua...

IPR researchers continued the study of persistent poverty in America. This is the third of a five-part series that will examine how IPR has grown and evolved in each decade. IPR Director Diane Whi...

While the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates whether to allow a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau continues to prepare for its launch on April 1. In a recent working paper, sta...

IPR political scientist James Druckman, who organizes the annual workshop, welcomed the 2019 CAB participants. More than 100 scholars and graduate students from the Midwest gathered on Northwestern...

Below is this month's new research from IPR faculty. Social Disparities and Health (Cells to Society) College Graduation Helps and Hurts Disadvantaged Minorities’ Health College graduates liv...

IPR faculty Christopher Kuzawa, Lincoln Quillian, and Sera Young each received recognition for their excellence in research.  Three IPR fellows—anthropologists Christopher Kuzawa and Ser...

Pregnancy complications increased in Illinois between 2010 and 2015, find Feinberg researchers.  Severe maternal morbidity remained stable in Illinois between 2010 and 2015, while more women e...

IPR's Sera Young spoke on the importance of water security at an HWISE event in February.  Over the past three years, a tightknit team of interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners develo...

Fewer women than men participate in the labor force, and the ones who do earn less on average than their male coworkers. But do these labor-market and wage gaps still hold in the gig economy? Throu...

IPR anthropologist Sera Young was named to the fifth class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows.  IPR anthropologist Sera Young is among the fifth class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, comprising 32 ...

IPR faculty have studied the history and effects of immigration in the United States. Faculty researchers at the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) have long studied issues related to immigrants ...

Stateway Gardens, one of the Chicago Housing Authority’s high-rise public housing complexes, housed nearly 7,000 people in 1973. In 1976, the landmark public housing discrimination case, Hill...

Protests and riots broke out across the nation in spring 1968 following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. This is the first of a five-part series that will examine how IPR has grow...

Women who shared their mother’s womb with a male twin are less likely to graduate from high school or college, have earned less by their early 30s, and have lower fertility and marriage rate...

Since joining his first news chatroom in 1996, IPR associate Pablo Boczkowski’s research has followed the transformation of online journalism—from the early days of news websites in the 1990’s to social media’s influence on today’s news consumption.

Students of color who attend schools with a culture that emphasizes the value of diversity—schools whose mission statements mention goals such as serving a diverse student body and appreciati...

IPR sociologist Monica Prasad examines how Republicans became the party of tax cuts in 'Starving the Beast.' What led Republicans to make tax cuts a defining policy of the modern conservative part...

In a new Northwestern University study, researchers show that people are more willing to sacrifice for a collaborator than for someone working just as hard but working independently. &#1...

IPR fellow Beth Tipton studies statistics and explores how they can be used for social good across disciplines. IPR statistician Beth Tipton spent the first three years of her career living and w...

Jocelyn Samuels spoke at Northwestern about the challenges and opportunities for LGBT rights. More than 14 million people—roughly 4.5 percent of the U.S. population—identify as lesbian,...

IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol was named a Rising Star by the Association forPsychological Science. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) recently named IPR developmental p...

IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is the 10th Northwestern faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Education. IPR Director and economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach has ...

A working paper examined the connection between race and politics in college admissions.  Do college admissions offices respond differently to students who email them for information, dependin...

IPR developmental psychologist Terri Sabol studies childhood development through classrooms, families, and neighborhoods. As a first-grade teacher in Chicago’s Lavizzo Elementary School, IP...

Despite a scientific consensus, citizens are divided when it comes to climate change, often along political lines, and scholars want to better understand why. “We were interested in understa...

A study highlights the importance of addressing bias in a child's first years of life.  A Northwestern University study provides strong and consistent evidence of bias at the intersection of r...

IPR education sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa is currently studying racial disparities at a large urban high school. Schools are increasingly turning to peace circles, peer juries, and other restorat...

IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin received the 2019 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin, whose research...

From left: Greg Miller, Paola Sapienza, and David Cella Three IPR faculty were recently named 2018 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. IPR health psycho...

Amid the nonstop news cycle of 2018, IPR faculty research has provided a rigorous, evidence-based foundation for dialogue on pivotal policy issues. Many of IPR’s most-read articles reflect wi...

Click on the image above to see a larger version of the infographic. Five states now require that Medicaid recipients work, which has cut benefits for tens of thousands of people. As another 11 sta...

 Why does second-hand experience of neighborhood violence affect some youth but not others? Neighborhood violence has been associated with adverse health effects on youth, including sleep loss...

Elizabeth (Liz) Gerber set out to make innovative toys, not get a PhD. Yet as she experimented with new ways for children to share their likes and dislikes, she realized she was more intereste...

IPR sociologist Andrew Papachristos finds the inequality in crime in Chicago's neighborhoods increased by 10 percent in recent years. The United States has experienced an unprecedented decline in ...

 Rachel Davis Mersey, right, was one of three panelists discussing the implications from the 2018 midterms. The 2018 midterm election broke several records: 133 million people—48 percent...

Sarah Kliff, left, spoke with Medill professor Abigail Foerstner about the future of healthcare following the midterms. As the dust settles from the midterms, the Affordable Care Act will remain t...

The United States is experiencing a “national crisis” because of extreme polarization, according to Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  Arthur ...

Andrew Papachristos launched the N3 Initiative this fall, continuing his work in neighborhood network science.  This fall, IPR sociologist Andrew Papachristos launched the Northwestern Neighbo...

 IPR labor and education economist Kirabo Jackston finds that a teacher's ability to cultivate non-cognitive skills is a better indicator of a student's long-term success than test scores...

 IPR education sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa calls for a more sustained effort on shifting how we view girls. The midterm elections demonstrated a shift for women in politics and a move to gen...

IPR economist Jonathan Guryan cofounded and codirects Education Lab, which designs and evaluates evidence-based programs in partnership with organizations such as Chicago Public Schools. AbbVie...

From left, clockwise: Economist Rebecca Blank in the 1990s, now Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; political scientist Lou Masotti, IPR's second director, in Chicago in the 1970s; I...

To many, the 1918 flu pandemic that killed more than 50 million people around the world is a distant chapter of history. To economist and IPR associate Joseph Ferrie, this historical event offers a...

Sheridan Fuller focuses on how families' interactions with the social safety net influence the direction of their lives. IPR graduate research assistant Sheridan Fuller is one of 40 students...

Click image to enlarge. When police officer Jason Van Dyke shot Laquan McDonald in 2014, he already had more than 20 civilian allegations lodged against him for police misconduct, dating back to 2...

  In the 10 years since the Lehman Brothers collapse that signaled the start of the Great Recession, the United States has recovered much, if not all, of the ground it lost in terms of jobs, f...

Statement from Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach: The Yidan prize honors a researcher who has made outstanding accomplishments in education research, with an ultimate goal of creating long-lasting impact...

IPR education researcher and statistician Larry Hedges, a preeminent scholar and global heavyweight in education research, has been awarded the 2018 Yidan Prize, the world’s largest prize in ...

About 12 million Americans use payday loans each year, but new research shows these short-term loans could be making borrowers sick. In SSM - Population Health, IPR biological anthropologists Chris...

IPR economist Matthew Notowidigdo presents his research at a Fay Lomax Cook Monday Colloquium.  Millions of Americans rely on social safety net programs like unemployment insurance, hous...

Only 10–15 percent of the American public watches partisan news outlets such as MSNBC and Fox News, but their polarizing impact reaches beyond the viewers of their broadcasts, according to r...

Onnie Rogers New Northwestern University research analyzing the ways children’s gender narratives reinforce or disrupt gender inequality found that older children—and girls&...

 IPR anthropologist Sera Young recently presented on pica, or the eating of earth. Walking into an art installation of edible clay by artist Masha Ru, some visitors popped bits in their mouths...

 Clockwise from left: Robin Nusslock, Hannes Schwandt, Beth Tipton, Terri Sabol, Chloe Thurston, and Julia Behrman. Five new fellows are joining the Institute for Policy Research in September,...

Each summer since 1998, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) has run the Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program, which gives undergraduate students first-hand experience in...

While U.S. women’s job and life prospects have changed dramatically over the last 50 years, a new study finds the amount of sexism in the state where a woman was born can take a toll on her e...

A new study by IPR economist Hannes Schwandt reveals income inequality and inequality in mortality are not necessarily linked. Income inequality and health inequality are not necessarily connecte...

  Once considered a Great Compromise in and of itself, the U.S. Congress now seems a place of extraordinary inaction. Though ideological polarization is often to blame for today&#82...

  IPR political scientist Chloe Thurston discussed how government policies have affected homeownership in the United States at the 2017 Chicago Political and Social Behavior Workshop. Tracing ...

From the impact of millions of refugees on host countries to the effects of rising global trade on domestic workers, the 2018 Northwestern University Workshop on Globalization focused on the effect...

IPR sociologist Andrew Papachristos studies network science to understand the spread of crime and violence. Growing up at the height of Chicago’s homicide epidemic, IPR sociologist And...

IPR political scientist Rachel Beatty Riedl credits a yearabroad in Senegal with developing her interest in Africa. Northwestern University has appointed IPR political scientist Rachel Beatt...

Since May, more than a dozen IPR faculty have received noteworthy awards from a handful of prominent national academies, scholarly bodies, and universities. Charles F. Manski (center) accepts his h...

 IPR political scientist Jamie Druckman, left, welcomes participants to 12th annual Chicago Area Political and Social Behavior Workshop. More than 110 scholars and graduate students from ...

Fay Lomax Cook, assistant director of the National Science Foundation, discussed how technology will change the future of work. (Photo: Jason Brown) With the rise of artificial intelligence, machin...

IPR economist Ofer Malamud examines whether different college systems have an impact on career choice. A global outlook on decision making comes naturally to IPR economist Ofer Malamud. Born in I...

IPR anthropologist Christopher Kuzawa  IPR anthropologist Christopher Kuzawa has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the academy is one of the hi...

More than 110 scholars and graduate students from the Midwest and beyond gathered at Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus on May 4 for the 12th annual Chicago Area Political and Social ...

More students report carrying guns in Chicago than in New York or Los Angeles, a new Northwestern Medicine study shows. The findings provide historical background for Chicago’s 2016 spike in...

“We are gathered today to discuss what is perhaps one of the most pressing topics facing the city of Chicago today: crime and violence,” said Northwestern University sociologist and IPR...

 Christopher Skovron presents findings from the National Candidate Study at a recent lecture. With the 2018 midterms approaching and candidates seeking to appeal to voters, do politicians rea...

Robert Rubin and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach discuss challenges facing America, decision making, and working in the public versus the private sector. (Photo: Jason Brown) As an economic advisor t...

Young men who have sex with men have some of the highest rates of new HIV infections. But LGBTQ youth’s experiences with healthcare providers could be a barrier to receiving prevention inform...

IPR biological anthropologist Thomas McDade  Poverty, discrimination, and other social and economic inequalities have serious consequences for physical and mental well-being. Recently, socia...

IPR anthropologist Sera Young focuses on maternal and child health, examining the causes and consequences offood and water insecurity. Whether attending an international high school in Wales or l...

Schoenfeld examines how the politics of crime evolved. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation, with about 1 in 100 American adults currently behind bars...

Can poverty affect health across generations? In Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, IPR health psychologist Greg Miller and his colleagues find that a mother’s economic hardship during childhood ...

IPR education sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa will examine how different disciplinary approaches shape the experiences of students of different races. IPR education sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa ha...

Healthcare providers in the United States rate African American patients as less likely to improve and adhere to recommended treatments than white patients. When an overweight, middle-aged patient...

  Strobe Talbott, left, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach discussed the role of academia in public policy at a recent special lecture co-hosted by IPR and the Buffett Institute for Global Studie...

Which word has more letters, Clinton or Trump? The answer may seem obvious: Seven is greater than five, so Clinton is the longer word. Yet in 2017 when conservatives faced a similar question that ...

  Robert Vargas discusses his findings on violence in the Little Village neighborhood with IPR psychobiologist Emma Adam (left) and Nicole Nguyen of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Chic...

  The NRA has created a political identity for its members, politically mobilizing them.  After every mass shooting, including the recent Parkland, Florida, school shooting, the National ...

Less than a month after Hurricane Harvey poured 51 inches of rain over Texas and Louisiana, Chicago residents were sweltering in six consecutive days of record-setting September heat.IPR associate ...

As a college student gathering evidence for her debate team on development assistance in Africa, IPR economist Cynthia Kinnan found fraught claims about what did and did not work. Throughout her c...

Polysomnography equipment is attached to a participant in thein-home sleep study. (Photo: Kristen Knutson) Previous research has already linked chronic inadequate sleep—defined as fewer tha...

By showing babies patterns of images on a screen, IPR's Sandra Waxman discovers that babies are able to abstract rules in the visual domain. Three-month-old babies cannot sit up or roll over, yet ...

The #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and LGBTQIA movements, among others, have raised awareness about the stubborn persistence of various kinds of discrimination that people from all walks of life, r...

IPR associate Benjamin Page and his co-author argue that ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence on government policy. In their new book, Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wron...

Click image to enlarge. Visualizing a successful future can help anxious college students manage challenges and stress, according to a Northwestern University-led study published in the journ...

A partner can provide critical support during tough times, according to IPR associate Brian Mustanski. Lesbian and gay youth showed significantly less psychological distress and were buffered agai...

 Since NFL player Colin Kaepernick first kneeled during the national anthem in the 2016 season, political protests have become a major topic of discussion in sports. Many athletes have st...

A woman collects water as part of a "go-along" interview near Rongo, Kenya. IPR anthropologist Sera Young is using interviews and other techniques to discover how water insecurity affects live...

In conjunction with the book's publication, IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach participated in a forum exploring public policies to promote women's economic opportunity. Over the course...

Food companies are using "advergames" to market unhealthy choices to children online, IPR associate Ellen Wartella finds. Food companies are marketing less to children online—which advocates...

Last year saw a new administration settle into office, with policy debates spilling over from Capitol Hill and the White House into state legislatures, courts, town halls, and the streets. Man...

IPR health psychologists Edith Chen and Greg Miller were honored for their research, teaching, and mentoring. Internationally renowned IPR health psychologists Edith Chen and Greg M...

Chicago is IPR associate Mary Pattillo’s home and also her research subject. A sociologist and African American studies researcher, she found a city where she could investigate questions that...

Numerous studies have shown a relationship between high-crime communities and the academic performance of children who live within them. Now, recent Northwestern University research published in&...

Cynthia (CC) DuBois (PhD ’17), an emerging, award-winning scholar in Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP), died as a result of brain cancer on Jan. 2 i...

IPR associate Robin Nusslock is examining the brain's relationship with mental and physical well-being. A chance encounter with the Dalai Lama set psychologist and IPR associate Robin Nusslock on ...

Political scientist Mary McGrath investigates how regular citizens make political decisions. “Some of the most important decisions that we make as members of the public are political decision...

Click on the image above to see a larger version of the infographic. The jobless rate for African-Americans persists regardless of their level of educational attainment, when compared with whites...

IPR associate Joe Feinglass studies health inequities and tracks the effects of the Affordable Care Act. The “power of data to inform the public” is what research professor of medicine ...

IPR sociologist Beth Redbird examines diverse aspects of inequality. Beth Redbird caught the research bug while working to promote affordable housing in Columbus, Ohio, after contacting an Ohio St...

Click on the image above to see a larger version of the infographic. New research, led by IPR scholars, underscores how environmental conditions early in development can cause inflammation in adul...

IPR's Teresa Woodruff has developed a miniature female reproductive tract and a functional biosynthetic ovary. Oncofertility specialist and IPR associate Teresa Woodruff is making great gains in ...

A report from the American Enterprise Institute and The Hamilton Project supports investing in federal data. According to a recent bipartisan report between the American Enterprise Institute and ...

IPR researchers have captured the short- and long-term cognitive effects of prenatal exposure to Superfund sites. Children who live near hazardous waste sites can benefit from environmental clean...

IPR sociologist/legal scholar Heather Schoenfeld studies mass incarceration and criminal justice policy. A few years out of college, IPR sociologist and legal scholar Heather Schoenfeld went to wor...

IPR economist Burton Weisbrod has conducted pioneering research into the role of nonprofit organizations. From his early studies in chemical engineering, IPR economist Burton Weisbrod found the &...

Kathryn Edin recounts the day-to-day struggles of the extreme poor, who live on less than $2 a day. It was opening a refrigerator in a bare, rundown apartment and seeing nothing but a milk carton...

IPR associate Brayden King finds that media attention, more than petition signatures, make boycotts effective. Kellogg’s, Pepsi, Uber, L.L. Bean. In recent months, a number of high-profile ...

Click on the image above to see a larger version of the infographic. Many researchers have tried to understand why school shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon, but past studies have prese...

IPR economist Seema Jayachandran studies issues like gender inequality in developing countries. IPR economist Seema Jayachandran set out to study engineering and physics, but two years into her PhD...

Claudia Haase, developmental psychologist and IPR associate, studies how humans develop across their lives. Growing up in East Germany, “We had no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press,...

IPR health psychologist Greg Miller investigates how socioeconomic status relates to health. As a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, IPR health psychologist Greg Miller...

IPR developmental psychologist Onnie Rogers examines how stereotypes affect youth identity. As an undergraduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and as the only African-Americ...

IPR political scientist Wesley Skogan studies police-community interactions, with a particular focus on Chicago. As a pioneering expert in policing, IPR political scientist Wesley G. Skogan has be...

IPR political scientist James Druckman investigates what affects, and changes, our opinions. Purple pride flows strongly through James Druckman’s veins: His father, Daniel, graduated from No...

In an IPR working paper, political scientist and policing expert Wesley G. Skogan examines the consequences of such a policy in Chicago, focusing on how police encounters affect public trust in police. His major finding? “Stop and frisk” policies can serve to lower the public’s trust in the police. For his study, Skogan conducted a representative in-person survey of 1,450 Chicagoans in 2015, nearly 30 percent of whom reported being stopped by police in the previous 12 months.

IPR political scientist Rachel Beatty Riedl discusses a research experiment on religious messaging in Nairobi, Kenya. Beginning in the late 1980s, pro-democracy forces across Africa toppled some o...

IPR education sociologist Simone Ispa-Landa forges ahead in the study of "subtle" inequality. From observing how individuals cope with having a visible criminal record, to how white students and t...

IPR statistician Bruce Spencer is one of the world’s leading experts in statistical accuracy. A discarded pamphlet on a New York subway train is what pushed IPR fellow Bruce Spencer to b...

Obesity in America remains a serious public health problem—one that disproportionately affects low-income Americans and minorities—and in particular, Hispanics/Latinos in the United States, the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority group in the country. More than 40 percent of Latino men and women are obese, compared with 32 percent of non-Hispanic, white Americans. Professor of medical social sciences and IPR associate Frank Penedo and a team of investigators supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute seek to understand what might be driving these racial and ethnic disparities in obesity rates.

IPR economist Matthew Notowidigdo examines how different policies might affect a host of employment, health, and financial outcomes. IPR labor economist Matthew Notowidigdo often kicks off his he...

Alice Eagly (center) discusses the obstacles women leaders must overcome to negotiate the "labyrinth" of gender inequality with panelists Brigham Young political scientist Christopher Karpowi...

A minority at elite institutions, first-generation students suffer academically and psychologically on campus, surrounded by “continuing-generation” peers and faculty who often lack understanding of their situation.

Christine Percheski presents her research on economic inequality at an IPR colloquium. “I didn’t think I was going to be an academic—I thought I’d go into law or maybe poli...

Participants confer at the ABCD conference in Blackpool, England. Not long ago, when community organizers and social workers wanted to improve disadvantaged neighborhoods, they began by chroniclin...

People form stereotypes based on inferences about groups' social roles—like high school dropouts in the fast-food industry. Picture a high-school dropout. Now, think about what occupation th...

Mass incarceration, Harvard sociologist Bruce Western argues, has contributed to growing inequality in the U.S. Today, about 1.6 million people are serving time in a state or federal prison in the...

Social psychologist Claude Steele gives a lecture on his book, Whistling Vivaldi, at Northwestern University, Feb. 4. In looking at graphs of University of Michigan undergraduate grades broke...

IPR political scientist Laurel Harbridge (at right) poses with former Republican Senator Olympia Snowe during a conference on the ethics of political dysfunction held at the University of Missouri...

Low-income neighborhoods in Paris (left) and New York City, two of the cities compared in the study. A new working paper by IPR sociologist Lincoln Quillian and his colleague Hugues Lagrange of Sc...

Foreclosure signs around the nation continue to illustrate to the lingering effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  While the U.S. economy is predicted to take off...

Recently, sociologist and IPR associate Mary Pattillo released the second edition of her ground-breaking book Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class—one of only a few ethnographic studies of a black middle-class neighborhood. In the 2013 edition, she revisited the same topics discussed in the 1999 original—namely the economy, crime, and housing—and put them in context with the economic downturn and the foreclosure crisis.

Cecilia Rouse, Woodrow Wilson dean and Princeton professor, recalls the art of balancing work in the White House and family life with IPR Director David Figlio. How does one advise the president ...

Does being in an all-male or all-female school lead to better education outcomes? Proponents of single-sex education argue that it does because boys and girls learn differently and thus benefit f...