Urban Institute researchers examine gender inequalities, racial segregation, and the mutually reinforcing disparities they cause in education, housing, employment, income, and health care.
Our experts analyze race and gender gaps in student test scores, measure unequal treatment toward minorities in the housing market, and study the persistent discrimination that feeds wealth and income gaps. We also probe the unique challenges of single mothers, noncustodial fathers, and hard-to-employ young men—and evaluate the public and private programs designed to help them.
In 1965's The Negro Family: The Case for National Actions, Daniel Patrick Moynihan described a "tangle of pathologies" --from disintegrating families to poor educational outcomes, weak job prospects, concentrated neighborhood poverty, dysfunctional communities, and crime--that would create a self-perpetuating cycle of deprivation, hardship, and inequality for black families. Today, although social progress has created opportunities for many members of the black community, the United States still struggles with many of the problems Moynihan identified. If we don’t enhance economic opportunities and social equity for black families, we may spend the next 50 years lamenting our continued lack of progress.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," provoked a firestorm of debate in its probing of the roots of black poverty and the decline of the black nuclear family. Nearly five decades later, "The Moynihan Report Revisited" gauges how the circumstances of black families have changed and how they compare with other racial and ethnic groups; documents how blacks still suffer from intersecting disadvantages that Moynihan referred to as a "tangle of pathologies"; and suggests ways to improve the circumstances of black families and reduce racial disparities.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the Urban Institute, has released its 2012 Housing Discrimination Study: Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities. The study's findings confirm a hard truth: that America's long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Real estate agents and rental housing providers recommend and show fewer available homes and apartments to minorities than equally qualified whites.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the Urban Institute, has released its 2012 Housing Discrimination Study: Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities. The study's findings confirm a hard truth: that America's long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Real estate agents and rental housing providers recommend and show fewer available homes and apartments to minorities than equally qualified whites.
Why have middle-income blacks and Hispanics seen little, if any, improvement in their economic status relative to whites? New research from the Urban Institute's Opportunity and Ownership Project points to an ever-widening wealth chasm.
Latest Research
Urban Institute researchers examine gender inequalities, racial segregation, and the mutually reinforcing disparities they cause in education, housing, employment, income, and health care. 
