Library

Looking for new and notable information to help you dig deeper into an issue? Start with these featured reports and web sites, and then browse through our full selection by topic.

Reports: Featured

Uneven pain: Unemployment by metropolitan area and race
Economic Policy Institute, June 2010, 11 pp.
Details the variation in unemployment across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The Twin Cities metropolitan area has the highest black-white unemployment ratio, with the black unemployment rate three times that of the white rate.

Status of women and girls in Minnesota: Research overview
Women's Foundation of Minnesota and Center on Women & Public Policy, June 2010, 20 pp.
Provides health, safety, economic and leadership data on women and girls in Minnesota. Analysis of the measures reveals greater disparities for women of color, rural women, older women, women with disabilities, and women who identify as lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Policies that strengthen fatherhood and family relationships: What do we know, and what do we need to know?
MDRC, April 2010, 45 pp.
Widening gaps in fathers’ involvement in parenting and in the quality and stability of parents’ relationships may reinforce disparities in outcomes for the next generation. This paper reviews evidence about the effectiveness of two strategies to strengthen fathers’ involvement and family relationships.

Early warning: Why reading by the end of third grade matters
Annie E. Casey Foundation, April 2010, 62 pp.
Disparities in reading achievement persist across racial and ethnic groups. This report examines the failure of many children in American, particularly low-income children, to reach the “proficient” level in reading by fourth grade. It explores factors that undermine grade-level reading proficiency and offers recommendations for improvement.

Healthy food, healthy communities: Promising strategies to improve access to fresh, healthy food and transform communities
PolicyLink, March 2010, 28 pp.
Presents promising programs and policies that work to increase access to healthy foods in underserved communities.

U.S. economic and social trends since 2000
Population Reference Bureau, February 2010, 20 pp.
Presents social and economic data from the American Community Survey.

The Grocery gap: Who has access to healthy food and why it matters
PolicyLink, The Food Trust, February 2010, 44 pp.
Inequitable access to healthy food is a major contributor to health disparities. This report presents a large body of evidence that many low-income communities, communities of color, and sparsely populated rural areas do not have sufficient opportunities to buy healthy, affordable food.

American Indians and the great recession: Economic disparities growing larger
Economic Policy Institute, December 2009, 8 pp.
American Indian workers suffered recession-level rates of unemployment long before the current recession began. This issue brief examines the increasing gap between American-Indian and white unemployment rates, both nationally and regionally.

The Consequences of dropping out of high school: joblessness and jailing for high school dropouts and the high cost for taxpayers
Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, October 2009, 16 pp.
This research paper outlines the employment, earnings, incarceration, teen and young adult parenting experiences and family incomes of the nation’s young adult high school dropouts and their better educated peers in 2006 to 2008.

Disparities in early learning and development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B)
Child Trends, June 2009, 39 pp.
This study finds disparities between poor, at-risk children and more advantaged children as early as 9 months of age. It identifies low income and low maternal education as the factors most strongly associated with poorer cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes among very young children and also finds that the more risk factors a child has, the more profound the disparities.

Educating Minnesota's immigrant students
Citizens League, February 2009, 44 pp.
This report represents the work of the Study Committee on Immigration and Higher Education. It includes findings and recommendations on how Minnesota can increase immigrant student readiness and success in higher education.

Reducing racial disparity in the criminal justice system: A Manual for practitioners and policymakers
The Sentencing Project, January 2008, 74 pp.
Presents information on the causes of disparities in the criminal justice system and examines what actions can be taken among criminal justice professionals to reduce disparities at each decision point in the system. The report includes best practices from the field, including two from Minnesota, that have been demonstrated through empirical analysis to show promising results in reducing disparities.