Women/Children Blogs & Reports
State Policy Comparison: Abortion Policy in New Jersey vs. Kentucky
By Taylor Hughes Abortion, the medical termination of a pregnancy, is one of the most divisive moral, political, and cultural issues impacting the United States today. In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the [...]
Transforming Black Maternal Wellbeing: The Power of Person-Centered Care Interventions in New Jersey
By: Bernice Amankwah As a result of longstanding structural inequities, African American women endure greater trauma, socioeconomic disparities, and stress, and have less access to healthcare and social support during the perinatal period, which occurs [...]
Advancing Perinatal Mental Health Equity in New Jersey
By Slawa Rokicki, Mitu Patel, Patricia Suplee, & Robyn D’Oria. Perinatal mental health, which includes depression or anxiety that occurs during pregnancy or in the postpartum period, is a significant public health problem [...]
Report Release: Who Experienced the Greatest Financial Burden from Inflation in NJ?
By Jocelyn Fischer, Ph.D. and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Ph.D. During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey has experienced record high levels of inflation. These price increases raise concerns about New Jerseyans’ financial well-being. However, inflation [...]
Data Brief Release: Inflation Hurts Everyone but Some More than Others in New Jersey
By Jocelyn Fischer and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers. Inflation levels in the U.S. have reached decades-long highs during the COVID-19 pandemic and in its wake. Because inflation can erode people’s ability to afford the goods and services they need, the recent uptick in inflation has raised concerns [...]
After-School Programs and Students’ Academic Behavior in New Jersey: Current Situation and Future Development
By Xiao Liang After-school programs in the United States can be traced back to the late 19th century, developed from historical changes in children’s participation in the labor force market, the introduction of formal schooling [...]
Risk Perception of Cannabis Use in Young Adults
By Sofia Wernyj. Research suggests that the younger a person begins using cannabis, the higher the likelihood of them developing a dependence on the drug. Studies done on states that have legalized recreational marijuana indicate [...]
Report Release: Analyzing Child-Care Provider Subsidies in New Jersey: Issues, Impacts, and Options
By Andrea Hetling. Public child-care subsidies are designed to reduce the financial burdens of child care for households that meet certain income thresholds in order to improve employment and/or educational opportunities for parents and other legal guardians. In New Jersey, child-care subsidy payments [...]
Report Release: Youth Mental Health in New Jersey: Current Status and Opportunities for Improved Services
By Karen Lowrie and Brooke Schwartzman. Teens of today have faced major shifts in societal, environmental, community, familial, and individual spheres, heightened by racial and school-based violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, creating challenges [...]
Report Release: The Status of New Jersey’s Childcare Infrastructure
By Jocelyn Fischer and Debra Lancaster. While children, parents, and employers have felt the sting of childcare market failures for several decades, deficiencies in the market were made more apparent and were more deeply felt as a result of pandemic-related closures and labor shifts [...]
Maternal Health Equity in New Jersey
By Julia Snyder. The CDC and The National Center for Health Statistics released data in March 2023 showing a dramatic rise in the U.S. maternal mortality rate from 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births [...]
Youth Mental Health in New Jersey: Current Status and Opportunities for Support Service Improvement
By Karen Lowrie and Brooke Schwartzman. Childhood, particularly adolescence, has always been marked by challenges, as youth learn to navigate the world. But times are changing; youth of today have faced major shifts in societal, environmental, community, familial, and individual spheres [...]
Literature Review & Policy Menu: How Can the Government Improve New Jersey Families’ Access to Childcare?
By Jocelyn Fischer and Debra Lancaster. Childcare is unaffordable for many families. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services deems affordable childcare costs as those that are no more than 7 percent of families’ incomes [...]
It’s Time to Disaggregate Data for Asian Americans: Subgroup Differences Among Asian Women
By Amanda Hinton In a follow-up to my previous blog post about the dangers of data aggregation for Asian Americans in research, I would like to dive deeper into examining disparities among women. Asian American [...]
Data Brief Release: A Supply-Demand Model Informs Childcare Market Deficits in New Jersey: Estimates Point to Need for More Data
By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Failing childcare markets have been detrimental to the US economy in recent years.[1] We have examined the childcare crisis in New Jersey from both the supply side and the demand side [...]
Supporting Childcare Capacity: A Policy Menu for New Jersey
By Sarah F. Small, Jocelyn Fischer, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, and Debra Lancaster. With New Jersey facing childcare shortages, policymakers are wondering how we can improve the supply of childcare services [...]
Data Brief Release: New Jersey’s Changing Population and Childcare Needs
By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Like many parents in the United States, New Jersey parents have faced some formidable obstacles finding accessible quality childcare. This is particularly true given changes in the childcare landscape during COVID-19, as documented in our recent report [...]
Data Brief Release: New Jersey’s Childcare Landscape During COVID-19: A Slow and Uneven Recovery
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Many New Jersey parents felt the sting of reduced childcare access during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the childcare landscape has not made a recovery [...]
Prevalence of Child Poverty in New Jersey
by Maia de la Calle, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) Over the past two decades, children in New Jersey have been more afflicted by poverty than have adults. Growing up in poverty translates to higher [...]
Report Release: Pandemic’s Impact on Women in NJ: Domestic Violence, Access to Healthcare and Housing
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. With so much economic precarity brought on by the pandemic, many women in New Jersey have been confronted with issues of homelessness and inaccessible healthcare [...]
How has COVID Affected Women and Work in New Jersey? Our New Report Investigates
Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Women’s work lives have been disrupted in profound ways during COVID-19: in their roles as frontline workers confronting the virus, as caregivers taking on even more unpaid care work at home due to childcare disruptions [...]
Women’s Work in Frontline Industries: Essential Roles, Little Reward
Sarah Small and Deb Lancaster Frontline essential workers were lauded as heroes in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultimately, little was done by way of supporting such workers. This meant that [...]
Report Release: COVID-19 and the Gender Wage Gap in New Jersey
With childcare disruptions, deep unemployment, and job changes, women in New Jersey have faced turbulent economic prospects worse than men’s along several dimensions throughout the pandemic. However, New Jersey women are no stranger to economic inequities [...]
Report Release: Enhancing Child Tax Credits’ Support of New Jersey’s Neediest Families
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Many New Jersey parents breathed a sigh of relief upon receiving their Child Tax Credit Payments in late 2021. Our new report at the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, in partnership with the New Jersey State Policy Lab [...]
Caring for Our Families during COVID-19: Costly Decisions for New Jersey Parents
Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster In the US and around the world, growing evidence indicates women have borne the brunt of the economic crisis and social upheaval triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. New Jersey [...]