We Hear You. We See You. We Support You.
June 3, 2020
We at the Institute for Social Research recognize the weariness, the anxiety, the anger, and the betrayal expressed by so many as our nation grapples with continued examples of racial injustice.Over the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbated inequities for communities...
William Axinn suspects marriage could become independent risk factor for depression
April 21, 2020
William Axinn believes that during this time of lockdowns and economic disruption due to COVID-19, bad marriages are harder to escape and could become a risk factor for depression: “Unfortunately, domestic violence is widespread in all settings, with clear adverse consequences for mental...
SRC Researchers and Population Association of American 2020 Annual Meeting
April 21, 2020
The Population Association of America has cancelled its 2020 Annual Meeting. These papers would have been presented April 22-25 and some of them will be presented as part of a virtual conference.Papers and/or presentations for canceled sessions may be available on the PAA Engage site if authors...
Matthew Shapiro comments on the Fed’s use of privately produced economic data
February 12, 2020
Federal Reserve officials are increasing working with privately produced economic data, recognizing that it is nearly as accurate – and often more timely – than government reports. SRC director Matthew Shapiro says these data are important for measuring the state of the economy:...
John Laitner comments on the reliance on Social Security for retirement
January 23, 2020
As baby boomers begin retiring in large numbers, reliance on Social Security is growing, putting stress on already tenuous funding. The ways that Americans fund their retirement is “in transition”, according to John Laitner: “In this environment, Social Security is more important...
Helen Levy discusses recently repealed health care taxes
January 21, 2020
Three taxes levied under the 2010 heath care law were repealed in December 2019. Helen Levy said these three made up approximately an eighth of the law’s total offsets and accounted for about half of the factors behind the CBO’s projection that the law would lower deficits over a...
Interdisciplinary team of researchers receive $3.4M convergence grant from NSF
January 9, 2020
ANN ARBOR – A group of University of Michigan researchers has been awarded a $3.4 million collaborative National Science Foundation convergence grant to develop and test methodologies for sampling, validating, and analyzing social media.A collaboration between U-M and Georgetown University,...
Grant will allow U-M researchers to study how poverty affects the brain
December 18, 2019
ANN ARBOR—Researchers know that adversity—especially poverty-related adversity—increases the risk for anxiety and depression.Now, University of Michigan researchers have won a $6.7 million grant to study how poverty-related adversity might affect the development of threat and...
Updated – Margaret Hicken comments on the long-term health effect of police shootings on black infants
December 12, 2019
An article in The Wired examines the stresses of structural racism affects health disparities among black women and infants, specifically police shootings. While the journal article on which this item was based has been retracted due to errors in the data set & analysis, Margaret Hicken had...
Kira Birditt’s study on tensions in the parent/adult child relationship cited in New York Times
December 12, 2019
In a New York Times article, Your Mom Is Destined to Annoy You, Jessica Grose cited Kira Birditt’s work on tensions in the parent/adult child relationship: “Research also shows that the connection between mothers and adult daughters is especially fraught; Dr. Birditt described it as...
