Published Research

To lower health care costs, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) offer tax incentives encouraging people to trade off current consumption against future consumption. This paper tests whether consumers use HSAs as self-insurance over the life cycle.

New research describes recent shifts in net tuition by family income and institution type and assesses the role of changes in state funding in generating these shifts.

In this research, we identified a barrier that makes sexism hard to recognize: rudeness toward men. We found that observers judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men.

Even though women make up roughly half of the students enrolled in law school today, they do not take up roughly half of the speaking time in law school classes. We found that women, more than men, report backlash for speaking in class, and this difference affects their willingness to participate in the law school classroom.

New research shows that expansions in children’s Medicaid eligibility increases the likelihood a mother is married, decreases her labor market participation, and reduces her smoking and alcohol consumption.

Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this case provides the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population and how these compare with VCCS graduates. The scholars show that the share of SCND students who are academically ready to re-enroll and would benefit from doing so may be substantially lower than policy makers anticipate.

Narratives about Africa as dark, depraved, and diseased justified the exploitation of African land and people. Today, these narratives may still have a hold on people’s fears about disease. This group of scholars conducts tests and studies that, when taken together, make clear that reactions to pandemics are biased, and in a way consistent with historical narratives about race and Africa.

Weak labor markets typically lead young workers to invest in skills. High unemployment during COVID diverged from prior downturns: enrollment at community colleges dropped by 9.5 percent between 2019 and 2020, with the drop larger among men.

Although previous attempts have been made to measure everyday discrimination against African Americans, these approaches have been constrained by distinct methodological challenges. We present the results from an audit or correspondence study of a large-scale, nationally representative pool of the American public. We provide evidence that in simple day-to-day interactions, such as sending and responding to emails, the public discriminates against Black people.

What are the issues that socially driven organizations face as they attempt to measure their social impact through the myriad social impact assessments (SIAs) available? In this paper, we aim to investigate this overarching research question using the example of RVA Works, a Virginia (Richmond)-based social enterprise that utilized educational programming to promote small business ownership and financial self-sufficiency among traditionally underserved and underprivileged demographics.

The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching, an explicitly racist act of violence.

Two Batten professors examine whether the least educated population groups experienced the worst mortality trends at the beginning of the 21st century by measuring changes in mortality across education quartiles.