The SBS Speakers Series for 2023-2024 featured speakers from the NYU Social Sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and anthropology) who are investigating critical public health problems from their disciplinary perspective. This speaker series was intended to foster a broader discourse about the role of social sciences in promoting public health.
Past Speakers:
2023
Covering the Undocumented: The Effects of A Large-Scale Prenatal Care Intervention
This event featured research by Dr. Laura Wherry focused on the effects of prenatal care interventions for undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public insurance for prenatal care in most states, despite their children representing a large fraction of births and having U.S. citizenship. In a paper coauthored by Wherry, researchers examined the short- and long-term effects of a policy that expanded Medicaid pregnancy coverage to undocumented immigrants using a novel dataset that links California birth records to Census surveys and administrative records on mortality, earnings, educational attainment and public program participation. Using these records, they identified siblings born to immigrant mothers before and after the policy. Implementing a mothers' fixed effects design, they found that the policy increased coverage for and use of prenatal care among pregnant immigrant women, and increased average gestation length and birth weight among their children. Later in life, these children experienced better educational outcomes, are less likely to have children at young ages, and receive fewer public support.
Applied Research from the Marron Institute: A Think-Do Tank at NYU
This presentation introduced the Marron Institute and provided a brief overview of its programming areas. Two projects were described in greater detail. Marron’s Urban Expansion program works with rapidly growing cities, worldwide, using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to help them develop inclusively and sustainably, with a focus on informal settlements. The team works with communities to prepare plans for orderly expansion that supports service infrastructure; the team’s field work in Ethiopia and subsequent evaluation of health and other outcomes in target cities will be described. The presentation also featured the Litmus program’s work in criminal justice, with a focus on Graduated Reintegration, an approach to improving the transition from prison to the community through early release from prison coupled with housing, employment, and health-services support. The presentation shared lessons learned from pilot counties, which spurred legislative reform in multiple states and subsequent innovation-and-testing with the implementing state agency. The presentation concluded with a summary of data tools developed for partner agencies, including in New York City.
2024
Exploring the Roles of Segregation by Location and Lender on Racial Inequality Mortgage Access
This event featured research by Dr. Jacob Faber on the influence of segregation on mortgage access. A rich, multidisciplinary literature has established wide racial disparities in access to home mortgage finance. Faber's research leverages data on over 74 million mortgage applications submitted between 2007 and 2017 to investigate the intersecting roles of segregation across geographies and segregation across lending institutions in shaping these disparities. While the literature has largely focused on spatial inequality as a driver of racial inequalities in mortgage approval rates, his results suggest that inequality across lending institutions may be an even more important contributor.
Experiences with Intervention in the Juvenile Legal and Child Welfare System
This event featured research by Dr. Erin Godfrey focused on the juvenile legal and child welfare system. Decades of research confirms the urgent need to change the juvenile legal and child welfare system’s response to young people in ways that reduce risk and promote health and wellbeing. The need for reform is especially pressing for girls, gender expansive youth, and youth of color. In this talk, Godfrey reviewed the situation facing system-involved young people and describe recent intervention approaches he have taken with partners inside and outside of the system to create setting- and system-level change in these institutions. Godfrey also describe the importance of authentic partnerships and the role that NYU’s institutes and centers can play in fostering this work.
Does Opportunity Come with Trade-Offs? The Impact of Small Area Fair Market Rents on Search Outcomes
This event featured research by Dr. Ingrid Gould Ellen. Despite having a mobile subsidy, housing choice voucher holders tend to live in a small set of high-poverty neighborhoods. In an attempt to broaden choices, HUD recently required a set of local housing agencies to switch from setting rent ceilings at the level of the metropolitan area to setting them at the ZIP Code level. Ellen and her colleagues examined the impact of this policy shift, including the potential unintended consequence of undermining progress on the other key weakness of the program (the large share of voucher recipients who fail to successfully use them). In brief, they found that the adoption of ZIP Code level rent subsidies helped new voucher holders lease homes in neighborhoods with higher rents and lower poverty rates, but we find little evidence that they affected the success new recipients had in using their vouchers within three years of implementation.