Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, and Stephen Roll, an assistant professor at the Brown School, both at Washington University in St. Louis, received grants from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to study how inequality affects economic growth and well-being in the United States.
Equitable Growth, founded in 2013, has distributed roughly $10 million to nearly 400 grantees at various U.S. colleges and universities. This year’s funding will be distributed to 35 grantees in all.
Rosenfeld, along with Patrick Denice of the University of Western Ontario and Jennifer Laird of City University of New York, will explore why the U.S. Supreme Court decision Janus v. AFSCME, which effectively made the public sector a so-called right-to-work labor force, did not appear to weaken public-sector unionization, and what organized labor can learn from this. The Russell Sage Foundation is co-funding this project, “Janus and the Future of Public Sector Worker Power.”
Rosenfeld’s research and teaching focus on the political and economic determinants of inequality in the United States and other advanced democracies.
Roll will work with Leah Hamilton of Appalachian State University to examine two guaranteed-income programs in Georgia to determine how these policies affect wealth- and credit-building for Black women.
Roll’s research focuses on promoting asset building, debt management and economic security in lower-income populations. He is the associate director of research at the Social Policy Institute.
