Race

The deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers in recent years have raised a number of questions about the treatment of racial minorities within the criminal justice system, as well as about patterns of arrest-related deaths more generally. Some researchers are calling for Congressional-mandated government databases to be more thorough so they can better find patterns in the violent interactions between police and civilians.

From White House executive action and Congressional pushback to child migrant increases and varying deportation figures, it can be hard to keep track of the news tick-tock on the immigration issue in the United States.

Likewise, it can be difficult to keep up with the myriad academic journals and reports, as a large network of social science researchers across the country continues to produce volumes of material on these issues.

The issue: Activist movements like Black Lives Matter have helped focus attention on police violence against unarmed black men. Camera phones allow abuses to be broadcast around the world instantly. But how does excessive police force affect black communities? New research suggests the violence undermines government authority and is even associated with a rise in crime.

The Issue: Who lives in America’s suburbs now? How are they changing? These are questions that, in recent years, might have seemed increasingly marginal, as so much media attention focused on the surprising revitalization of, and movement toward, cities. But the latest trends characterizing the U.S. suburbs are also fascinating, nuanced and in many ways as important as urban trends.

A clear and persistent legacy of the Great Recession is the country’s high national unemployment rate, which has hovered at 9 percent or greater since May 2009. It has been less clear, however, how the economic downturn has impacted the collective wealth of U.S. households.

In 2010 and 2011, the rate of poverty in the United States stayed roughly constant at 15% — some 46.2 million people, according to Census Bureau figures issued in September 2012. This represents the greatest total number of people designated as poor since the government began the count more than a half-century ago.

Update: The USDA’s “Cost of Raising a Child” report has been released for 2011.