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Racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, more commonly known as disproportionate minority contact (DMC), are the overrepresentation, disparity, and disproportionate numbers of youth of color entering and moving deeper into the juvenile justice system. There has been some legislative attention to the issue since the implementation of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA) and most recently with attempts in 2017 to reauthorize the Act. Originally focused solely on confinement, it became clear by 1988 there was disproportionality at all decision points in the juvenile justice system, and the focus changed to contact. DMC most commonly is known to impact Black and Hispanic youth, but a closer look reveals how other youth of color are also impacted. Numerous factors have been previously identified that create DMC, but increasingly factors such as zero-tolerance in schools and proactive policing in communities are continuing to negatively impact reduction efforts. Emerging issues indicate the need to consider society’s demographic changes, the criminalization of spaces often occupied by youth of color, and gender differences when creating and implementing strategies to reduce DMC.

Raising the educational standards for police officers represents a perennial police reform theme in the United States. Among other benefits, proponents herald college degree requirements as key to improving the quality and fairness of policing outcomes, including the chief formal response to crime: arresting suspected lawbreakers. However, the evidence base regarding college education requirements’ consequences for agency arrest behaviors is formative for various reasons, namely, the absence of studies examining whether these policies contribute to racially equitable arrest outcomes. The presented data show steeper decreases in the racial gap in Black and White people arrested for degree-requiring agencies compared to nondegree-requiring agencies between 2000 and 2016. Albeit encouraging news, the disparity rate for agencies with a college standard remains relatively higher. While what is implied is that college degree requirements alone will not resolve racial disparities in police arrests, it is premature to draw concrete conclusions about this often taken-for-granted association until more rigorous research is conducted.

The rapid rise in the incarceration rate, most notably in the United States over the last four decades, has drawn greater attention to the disabilities imposed by incarceration experiences and the spillover of these complications to the families of inmates. Prisons have always disproportionately drawn upon the disadvantaged, but research today details how imprisonment creates new harms for inmates as well as for those who are connected to them but were never incarcerated. In this contribution, the effects of incarceration on the family are briefly described across several domains. First, the social patterning of incarceration effects are described, for inmates and for their families, showing that imprisonment effects are both widespread and overwhelmingly repressive for some groups. Next, the effects of incarceration on the families of inmates are described, focusing on the partners and children of inmates, and differentiating between maternal and paternal incarceration. Incarceration is broadly harmful for families, but there is a significant gender gap in knowledge—research on paternal incarceration and the romantic partners of male inmates is much more common, rigorous, and uniform in findings. Where findings are mixed, scholarship is reviewed on how examining incarceration and family life has expanded across varying fields that often differ in their research approach, emphasis, and methodology. Finally, the discussion ends with the most pressing challenges for researchers going forward, suggesting that studies interrogating heterogeneity and leveraging new data sources offer the most fruitful path. This review is focused largely on the United States. First, and most practically, much of our knowledge about the effects of incarceration on the family is based on U.S.-based samples. Second, the effects of incarceration on the family have worsened significantly as a result of the prison boom in the United States. It remains to be seen how such effects translate to different contexts; some research suggests similar process at much lower incarceration rates, while others show less harm in other contexts.

Racial disproportionality and disparities have been documented in the child welfare system in the United States since at least the 1960s, yet they persist as a national problem. This article provides an overview of the history of racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare systems, the continuing presence of racial disproportionality and disparities, and the factors that contribute to racial disproportionality and disparities. The article concludes with strategies that have been developed over the years to address racial disproportionality and disparities, including calls for abolition of the child welfare system as a means of addressing these persistent problems.

Inequities in the United States have gained renewed attention as a result of social movements such as Black Lives Matter (racism), Me Too (sexual abuse and gender), and immigrant rights. Yet despite the growing awareness of inequality across major social categories, there has been little or no public attention paid to the persistent inequities facing older adults. The news media in the 2020 presidential elections uncritically reported charges that one, or both, candidates were “too old” for the job or had some other liability tied primarily to their age. There is a whole field of “anti-aging” medicine that claims to slow the biological process of senescence (distinct from fighting specific diseases), even as the greatest challenges of growing older are rooted in social and political processes. This reflects the ageism in society that results in undervaluing older adults’ lives and often marginalizes them. In addition, there are serious inequities within the older population based on class, race, gender, and citizenship status. Health inequities involve conditions that are avoidable, are not the result of informed choice (e.g., injuries among extreme sports participants), and which differ by membership in groups that hold different levels of power and resources. As such, inequities also include an element of “unfairness” such that the disadvantage is in groups with less power and resources than others.

South Africa’s social sector has evolved from simple and disjointed nonstate initiatives into a complex set of interventions, institutions, programs and services. The review presented in this paper shows that the development of social policy and institutions in South Africa has been shaped by the political and economic situation both locally and internationally. Like social policy in many other countries around the world, the state was initially reluctant to accept responsibility for the provision of social welfare services; most of the services were provided in a fragmented way by nonstate actors, including the Church. But from the 1920s, the state started to gradually accept the responsibility to provide social services including education, health care, housing and social welfare. Although different South African governments have, from colonial times to the 21st century, consistently rejected the idea of making South Africa a welfare state, the state has, with time, increasingly taken on greater responsibility, not only in terms of regulating all social services but also the provision of all public services in the country. Of all the social services, it is the cash transfer program (social grants) that currently attracts political and public attention in the country. However, it is the provision of education services that has consistently accounted for the largest share of public expenditure since the beginning of the democratic dispensation in 1994. For instance, in the 2022 to 2023 national budget, education services accounted for 20.4 percent of total public expenditures, followed by social development (social welfare) at 16.9 percent, and health care services at 12 percent. Social policy expenditure together accounts for almost half of government expenditure, which is roughly about 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The social policy scholarship in the country has historically focused on social welfare, a situation that gives the impression that social policy is synonymous with social welfare policy. Although this article focuses on the history of social welfare policy in South Africa, it is important to note that social policy is a broader field of public policy that includes education, health care, and social welfare (which in South Africa is also referred to as social development). One of the fundamental features that defines the history of social policy in South Africa is racial discrimination; institutionalized during colonial and apartheid periods, it has continued to shape and reproduce racial disparities in access to social services even thirty years after the fall of apartheid. While the democratic South African government has increasingly accepted and taken greater responsibility to provide social services, social policy in the country is characterized by a persistent tension arising from the commitment to neoliberal principles of fiscal discipline and austerity on one hand and espousing social democratic principles which emphasize the provision of meaningful support to citizens both as a form of social investment, as well as an instrument for addressing the legacies of colonialism and apartheid on the other. Since the dawn of democracy, this tension has been exacerbated by the growing calls to address racial injustices of the past, as evident in the number of protests, against the background of persistently weak economic growth since 2010.

Racially minoritized individuals experience distinct challenges to re-entry following incarceration in early 21st-century United States. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have contributed to a system that disproportionately punishes and incarcerates racially minoritized people. For the correctional system, these racial and ethnic disparities translate to issues related to “successful” community re-entry following incarceration. Traditionally, re-entry success has been considered to be avoidance of lawbreaking. However, ideas about re-entry success have developed to include broader concepts of successful reintegration into society. Prominent scholarship investigating criminal justice policies, procedures, and processes has made strides in identifying facilitators and barriers to successful reintegration for formerly incarcerated individuals and has uncovered obstacles uniquely faced by minoritized groups. Specifically, researchers have identified racially disparate correctional issues in areas such as probation and parole experiences, familial ties, resource access, employment and educational opportunities, community disadvantage, civic disenfranchisement, and access to quality health care. Recent scholarship has provided a wealth of considerations to ameliorate these obstacles to re-entry. Withal, extant research indicates a need for reform initiatives targeted to meet the needs of diverse correctional populations, including a shift toward equitable evidence-based policies and interventions and show support for positive re-entry outcomes for minoritized incarcerated and re-entering persons. Assisting re-entering individuals with accessing vital resources (e.g., health care, housing, government assistance), equipping them with necessary skills to live stable and independent lives (e.g., prison-based services, educational assistance, professional training, employment opportunities), promoting healthy connections with their families and communities, and restoring their civic power are all steps that evidence supports to improve re-entry success and reintegration. Continued research on these areas and race is essential to understanding the dimensions of disparate re-entry experiences and creating an even road to successful reintegration after incarceration.

Building wealth over lifetimes became possible for a broader span of the population in developed countries over the 20th century compared to any time in history. This was driven by more people having the capacity to save because of the expansion of middle-class jobs and education, access to highly developed financial markets, and government support for real estate investment. Housing wealth remains the dominant wealth-building vehicle for those outside the top decile of the income distribution. This, coupled with the high and growing level of residential segregation and local allocation of public goods in countries such as the United States, drives the unequal ability of individuals to build wealth depending on neighborhood of origin and residence. Segregated neighborhoods are drawn along racial and class lines, and while much progress has been made, historical and structural factors such as the legacy of slavery have contributed to the difficulty of fully closing the Black–White wealth gap. More generally, children who grow up in lower-status areas are significantly less likely to rise up the wealth and status ladder, and this is driven by a variety of disadvantages in those neighborhoods. These include higher levels of pollution; worse public services, especially education; and fewer prospects for jobs and training. Some of these can be changed by moving individuals and families to better neighborhoods, while the effects of a polluted environment on the development of 0- to 5-year-olds have long-lasting and often irreversible consequences. These factors have kept the “American Dream” of equality of opportunity and the ability to save and build wealth as individuals and households out of reach for significant portions of society. There is renewed interest in infrastructure investments and place-based policies to address this opportunity gap, which, due to its scale, is beginning to be recognized as having negative implications for the aggregate economy. Economists should maintain their focus on these important questions and continue to improve data sets as the range of assets in which people can build and store wealth grows.