IRP Seminars will be in-person meetings this semester, unless otherwise noted. Connection information for virtual seminars will be sent in advance to the IRP Seminar email list.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
Do Housing Vouchers Work When Rental Markets Don’t? Demand-Side Assistance Amid Extreme Rental Shocks
Sarah Strochak, Assistant Professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Housing Choice Vouchers are the primary form of rental assistance in the United States, yet they rely on the private provision of housing and are therefore heavily exposed to shocks to the rental market. During the period of rapid rent increases in 2021–2022, voucher success rates dropped sharply, while search times, overcrowding, and program costs rose. We identify three implementation strategies that can help to improve program performance amid periods of rapid rent increases.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Subverting the Law: Traffic Courts, Driver’s License Suspension Reforms, and Racial Inequality
Peter Rich, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Millions of people in the United States have their driver’s license suspended each year when they do not pay a traffic fine or appear in traffic court. These suspensions are concentrated in Black and Latinx communities that experience higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage, residential segregation, and policing. This seminar presents a study from New York State following the June 2021 enactment of the New York Driver’s License Suspension Reform Act (DLSRA), which ended suspensions for failure to pay traffic tickets. Drawing on unique DMV records, we show that although total suspensions declined across the state when suspensions for failure to pay were eliminated, suspensions for failure to appear in court increased in response to the law. Traffic courts played a key role in subverting the equity-based goals of the DLSRA.
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Penalties in the Safety Net: Economic Consequences of Work Requirement Enforcement
Katherine Richard, Assistant Professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Cash assistance in the United States promotes self-sufficiency through employment but imposes penalties that reduce or remove benefit income when participants violate work requirements. This seminar presents a paper quantifying the downstream consequences of not meeting work requirements using novel administrative data covering the full caseload of Michigan’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, combined with monthly enrollment records in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, as well as quarterly Unemployment Insurance earnings records. We estimate effects of violating work requirements and study a policy reform that increased the length of time families were removed from TANF after violating work requirements. Findings indicate that sanctions reduce broader safety net attachment and increase economic instability for vulnerable families over the long-term.
Thursday, October 1, 2026
Uncovering College Effect Heterogeneity
Jennie Brand, Professor, Department of Sociology, UCLA
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Co-sponsored with the Department of Sociology
This talk explores recent advances in causal inference and machine learning with an emphasis on identifying and interpreting treatment effect heterogeneity. Using an empirical application on the heterogeneous effects of completing a 4-year college degree in the United States on low-wage work and poverty across the career, I illustrate how causal machine-learning methods can be applied to substantively important questions. Understanding effect heterogeneity is central to evaluating how scarce resources are distributed, improving treatment assignment to enhance average outcomes, and assessing the external validity of findings beyond the study population. The talk highlights propensity- and covariate-based partitioning strategies, as well as tree-based methods, for detecting and characterizing heterogeneous treatment effects. By integrating these approaches, the analysis reexamines and extends established findings on educational inequality in reducing socioeconomic disadvantage.
Thursday, October 8, 2026
TBA
Fernando Saltiel, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, McGill University
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Sociohistorical Contexts of Racial Violence: Sundown Towns and the Durability of Racialized Public Space
Michael Esposito, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Scholarly work on racial violence has illustrated the diverse effects of historical practices like slavery, lynching, and redlining upon contemporary racial inequalities. We extend this work by considering the durable legacy of sundown towns – an understudied package of legal and conventional practices restricting the mobility of Black communities. We argue that the racialized organization of public space that was produced via sundown practices is expressed today in racialized engagement with public resources and test this using cell phone location data.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
WADC Day – Exploring the Wisconsin Administrative Data Core
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Better Data Communication
Jonathan Schwabish, Senior Fellow, Tax and Income Supports Division, Urban Institute and Founder of PolicyViz
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Co-sponsored with Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE) and Center for Demography of Health and Aging (CDHA)
Most academic reports and presentations bury great data under clutter, jargon, and bullet points nobody can follow. The result: insights that never land, findings that get overlooked, and audiences who tune out before the real point even arrives. It doesn’t have to be this way. In this talk, I share practical frameworks for cutting through the noise and making your data impossible to ignore. Drawing on real-world examples, I’ll demonstrate what separates charts that clarify from those that confuse, and presentations that resonate from those that get forgotten. You’ll leave with a concrete, repeatable toolkit: A way to think about your data before ever opening a chart tool, and a way to structure your delivery so audiences don’t just see your findings, they understand them, remember them, and act on them.
Thursday, November 5, 2026
No Seminar – APPAM
Thursday, November 12, 2026
Did the Affordable Care Act Save Lives?
Anuj Gangopadhyaya, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Loyola University Chicago
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Thursday, November 19, 2026
TBA
Brenda Jones Harden, Ruth Ottman Class of ’45 Professor of Child and Family Welfare, School of Social Work, Columbia University
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building
Co-sponsored with Department of Human Development & Family Studies (HDFS) and UW Center for Innovations in Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health
Thursday, November 26, 2026
No Seminar – Thanksgiving
Thursday, December 3, 2026
TBA
Carolyn Barnes, Associate Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago
12:15–1:30 pm, 8417 Sewell Social Science Building