News

DUPRI Scholar Kenneth Dodge has been elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for 2023.

A recent article Matt LoJacono published on the Sanford School of Public Policy website examines the work of several DUPRI scholars focused on children and families, including Jennifer Lansford, Christina Gibson-Davis, Lisa Gennetian, Kenneth Dodge, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Sarah Komisarow.

Sarah Komisarow received the Thomas A. Downes Best Paper Award for authoring the top journal article published in 2022 in Education Finance and Policy, the flagship journal of the Association for Education Finance and Policy. In the paper, "Comprehensive Support and Student Success: Can Out of School Time Make a Difference?," Komisarow finds that students who won random lotteries to enroll in a program offering extra summer and after-school educational and social support had better grades and less chance of being suspended than similar students who did not participate.

A recent article Matt LoJacono published on the Sanford School of Public Policy website examines the work of several DUPRI scholars focused on children and families, including Jennifer Lansford, Christina Gibson-Davis, Lisa Gennetian, Kenneth Dodge, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Sarah Komisarow.

DUPRI Scholar Angela O'Rand and Duke co-author Jenifer Hamil-Luker have a forthcoming paper to be published in Social Science & Medicine: Population Health titled "Black/white differences in the relationship between debt and risk of heart attack across cohorts". They find that debt is predictive of heart attack risk among aging adults, but the direction and strength of the relationship varies by type of debt, debtors’ racial identity, and economic context.

Jennifer Lansford, DUPRI scholar and director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, has been named President-Elect of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), the society announced on February 8.

Susan Alberts’ career of studying the savannah baboons in the field has greatly expanded our knowledge of wild primate social interactions. That work was recognized this week with the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, shared with two others including her dissertation adviser, Jeanne Altmann. Alberts becomes the third Duke researcher to win the Frontiers award.

In a recent paper titled "Earned Income Tax Credit Receipt By Hispanic Families With Children: State Outreach And Demographic Factors" published in Health Affairs, DUPRI scholar Lisa Gennetian and colleagues Dana Thompson (Child Trends), Yiyu Chen (Child Trends), and Luis E. Basurto (Duke University) examine the factors linked to lower EITC receipt rates among Hispanic families. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the largest refundable tax credit for low-to-middle-income US families with children, has been shown to improve maternal and child health and reduce public spending on health. However, many eligible families do not receive it. This study used 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation data to explore predictors of EITC receipt among Hispanic families, an understudied segment of the eligible population. The authors found lower likelihoods of receipt among Hispanic income-eligible families, even those who were eligible US citizens by naturalization, compared with their peers. Parent self-employment and lower English language proficiency were also associated with lower EITC receipt. With new data collected on state policies, the authors found that states’ granting of drivers’ licenses to undocumented people, availability of government information in Spanish, and employer mandates to inform employees were associated with greater EITC receipt among all income-eligible families, including Hispanic families. These findings showcase ways in which information and outreach at the state level can support the equitable receipt of tax refunds and similar types of benefits distributed through the tax system.

DUPRI scholars Christina Gibson-Davis and Lisa Keister, DUPRI student Warren Lowell, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania Courtney Boen, have published a paper in Social Science & Medicine titled "Net worth poverty and adult health". The study broadens the traditional focus on income as the primary measure of economic deprivation by providing the first analysis of wealth deprivation, or net worth poverty (NWP), and adult health.