The UC Davis Center for Poverty & Inequality Research
mission is to facilitate non-partisan academic research on
poverty in the U.S., disseminate this research, and train
the next generation of poverty scholars. Our research agenda
includes four themed areas of focus: labor markets and poverty,
children and intergenerational transmission of poverty, the
non-traditional safety net, and immigration.
Programs such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provide access to vital medical and nutrition services. In a recent study, we investigated whether demographic, social, and economic determinants of health, including length of time spent on these programs, were associated with diet quality and weight status in early childhood.
In a recent study, we examined the extent to which foods and beverages available in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Food Package help to improve the quality of young children’s diets.
To do so, we used diet quality from Healthy Eating Index-2020 scores in conjunction with data related to WIC participation among children aged 2 to 5.
We found that children with high WIC duration had higher total HEI-2020 scores compared with children with low WIC duration.
Exposure to gun violence within one’s own residential community is undoubtedly consequential. However, residents also spend significant time outside of their own neighborhoods, travelling to neighborhoods both near and far. Accounting for the collection of neighborhoods that are connected via resident daily travel, which I term the neighborhood network, contributes to a more complete portrait of gun-violence exposure.
In recent years, cash-assistance programs have been piloted across the United States, typically as Guaranteed Income (GI). In a recent study, we explored how these programs are being designed and evaluated. Reviewing 105 programs covering over 40,000 beneficiaries, we compared eligibility criteria, funding sources, distribution amounts, program administration, pilot duration, and evaluation measures.
In a recent study, we investigated pediatric-onset conditions in the US, seeking to identify recent trends as well as opportunities for prevention and intervention. Specifically, we analyzed chronic conditions (CC) and functional limitations (FLs) in more than 236,000 children (5-17 years) and young adults (18-25 years) between 1999 and 2018.
July 02, 2025
UC Davis Letters & Science Magazine
Alex Russell and Maria Sestito
White picket fences. Green, manicured lawns. Children on
bicycles.
The “American Dream” conjures images of a suburban ideal and
elicits hope and optimism, especially for immigrants and for
those fighting for democracy in their own countries. At the same
time, entire segments of society have been denied equality,
freedom and life. Even today, the promise of the American Dream
for millions remains completely out of reach.
May 6, 2025
Letters and Science Magazine
By Alex Russell
Rocío’s story of moving back and forth between the U.S. and
Mexico isn’t like any you’ve heard before. It began when her
daughter, 15 at the time, ran away with a man who took her from
Mexico City to the U.S.
UC Davis is a powerhouse for breakthroughs and impact. Our
interdisciplinary research plays a vital role in building the
region’s economy. Our research contributes to our nation’s global
leadership in technology and innovation. Through collaboration
between our top-ranked hospital and veterinary school, as well as
our science and engineering discoveries, our research directly
improves American lives.
Health economic evaluations of perinatal complications
with conflicting maternal-fetal interests: a scoping review
protocol
Perinatal complications involving conflicts between maternal and
fetal health interests present a unique challenge to health
economic evaluations. No comprehensive synthesis exists of how
such studies account for dual-patient outcomes. We aim to develop
a scoping review protocol to map and critically examine the
methodologies in this understudied area.
School shootings are a disturbingly regular occurrence in the
United States. While their direct impact on those involved are
well-researched, their broader effects on communities are less
understood. The authors focus on the underresearched question of
how such traumatic incidents affect community consumption. Using
data from various sources, the authors find that fatal school
shootings decrease grocery purchases by 2.09% in affected
communities, lasting up to six months. This economic impact is
felt more in liberal- than conservative-leaning counties.
Dr. Brittany Chambers is a community health scientist dedicated
to advancing sexual and reproductive health equity among Black,
Indigenous, and Other People Of Color’s (BIPOC). She merges
critical and public health theories to partner with BIPOC women
and birthing people and organizations to better understand,
operationalize and dismantle racism.
Dr. Kristen George is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in
the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of
California, Davis, School of Medicine. She received her BA in
Political Science with minors in Public Health and Anthropology
from Washington University in St. Louis. She received her MPH and
PhD in Epidemiology with a minor in Biostatistics from the
University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on lifecourse
vascular contributions to dementia and cognitive aging with a
particular interest in race and sex disparities.
Lenna Ontai is a Professor of Cooperative Extension whose work
focuses on the development of children’s health-related behaviors
in the family context. Her current work is focused on
understanding how families navigate barriers to facilitating
children’s adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors in early
development. She actively translates and disseminates research in
this area to inform UC Cooperative Extension programs that serve
families living with limited incomes.
Trained in environmental health and epidemiology, Dr. James has
focused his research on estimating the influence of spatial
factors, including exposure to nature, the built environment, the
food environment, air pollution, light pollution, noise, and
socioeconomic factors, on health behaviors, mental health, aging,
and chronic disease within large prospective cohort studies. He
has developed methodologies link smartphone-based global
positioning systems (GPS) and wearable device accelerometry data
to understand how spatial factors influence health behaviors.
Dr. Valle is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at
the University of
California, Davis. She is a scholar of migration, race and
ethnicity, and political sociology focusing on the experiences of
Latina/os in the United States.
Dr. Dulce Westberg is an Assistant Professor of Psychology
at the University of California, Davis. Her research examines how
individuals from racially and ethnically minoritized groups
navigate social structures, and how these structures shape
personality and identity development. Drawing on both qualitative
and quantitative methods, she explores life narratives related to
race, ethnicity, gender, and social class to understand their
links to psychosocial adjustment.
I study neighborhood inequality in US cities. Why are some
neighborhoods more disadvantaged than others? What are the
consequences of neighborhood disadvantage for health and
well-being? What are the causes and consequences of moving to a
more-advantaged neighborhood?
I have a specific interest in understanding these issues as they
relate to adolescents and young adults, with a particular focus
on the ways in which schools and neighborhoods interact to impact
poverty and inequality.
Courtney Lyles, PhD, is the Director of the UC Davis Center
for Healthcare Research and Policy (CHPR) and the Arline Miller
Rolkin Endowed Professor in Informatics. With over 15 years in
academia, Dr. Lyles has wide-ranging research experience in
health equity, digital health, and translational methods into
real-world practice and policy.
Dr. Nuño is interested in the application of statistics and
applied mathematical to solve public health challenges, reduce
health disparities, and improve patient health outcomes. Her
expertise lies at the interface of biostatistics, mathematical
modeling, epidemiology, and public health. She is an author of
more than 130 peer-reviewed publications and her areas of
expertise include statistical methods for multivariable and
clustered longitudinal study design, observational studies, and
big data analytics.
Tina Law is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University
of California, Davis. She studies inequality, race and ethnicity,
democracy, AI, and computational methodology. She uses
computational and quantitative methods to understand the social
and political experiences of racially minoritized and low-income
Americans, particularly how they define and advance their goals
for housing, safety, and political self-determination in cities
that are often highly unequal. She also develops approaches for
using AI and natural language processing to analyze text and
image data.
Dr. Joss Greene is a qualitative researcher who studies gender,
punishment, labor, and social change. He has researched
transgender people’s experiences with prisons, reentry,
work, and community care. He has also written several
papers about parole boards.
Dani Sandler is a principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau’s
Center for Economic Studies, where she leads research efforts,
supports collaborative projects, and develops statistical
products. With over a decade of experience at the Census Bureau,
Dani has held various roles, including FSRDC administrator and
research economist. She currently facilitates partnerships
between the U.S. Census Bureau, Princeton’s Evictions Lab, and
the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
I’m interested in understanding how structural adversities impact
the educational achievement and wellbeing of marginalized
children. I also focus on how school policies, practices, and
programs can support the wellbeing of vulnerable youth
populations, including children in the foster care system and
those facing schooling-related challenges like chronic
absenteeism and bullying.
I am primarily interested in the connections between
schooling and social inequality. In addition to the
Department of Sociology, I am also on the faculty of the Graduate
Group in Education.
A major question that motivates Erin’s research is how inequality
is generated and/or changed through migration and the policies
that regulate migration. Erin has studied:
Children’s development of self-regulation and behavior problems,
how they relate to parents’ mental health and parenting, and
their contributions to mental illness in childhood and
adolescence.
Briana Ballis is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Economics at the University of California-Merced.
Her research interests are in labor economics. Much of her work
focuses on studying the determinants of inequality in education.
Through her work, she seeks to better understand how individuals’
educational investment decisions are shaped by their environments
and backgrounds, and, in particular how policies or programs that
impact vulnerable youth can sere to reduce (or exacerbate)
pre-existing gaps in later life.
Katheryn Russ has expertise in open-economy macroeconomics and
international trade policy. She is a faculty research associate
in the National Bureau of Economic Research International Trade
and Investment Group and Co-Organizer of the International Trade
and Macroeconomics Working Group. She is a Non-Resident Senior
Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and
served as Senior Economist for International Trade and Finance
for the White House Council of Economic Advisors 2015-16.
Robert Faris uses social network analysis to investigate how
health risk behaviors, including bullying, dating violence,
substance use, and delinquency, spread through social ties and
are structured in the social hierarchies of schools.
His recent work shows that adolescents bully their own friends,
as well as schoolmates with whom they share friends, to achieve
higher social status, and examines the moderating role of network
stability in this dynamic.
Rose Kagawa is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Emergency Medicine. Dr. Kagawa conducts research on violence
prevention and firearm policy and has particular interest in
understanding how social and environmental contexts influence
violence perpetration and victimization through the life course.
The project examines employers’ strategies for hiring people
disadvantaged in the labor market, with a particular focus on
individuals living in generational poverty and members of
marginalized Roma communities (MRC), to narrow the mismatch
between labor supply and demand.
