Nationwide one of every 15 women in prison — over 6,600 women — are serving a sentence of life with parole, life without parole, or a virtual life sentence of 50 years or more. The nearly 2,000 women serving life-without-parole sentences can expect to die in prison. Death sentences are permitted by 27 states and the federal government, and currently 52 women sit on death row. This report presents new data on the prevalence of both of these sentences imposed on women. Nationally, one of every 39 Black women in prison is serving life without parole compared with one of every 59 imprisoned White women. Florida leads the nation with 241 women serving life-without-parole. The majority of women sentenced to death have been convicted of homicide. Analysis of homicide arrest data finds that women who commit homicide do so somewhat later in life than men. Whereas 48% of men who reportedly commit homicide are under age 25 at the time of their offense, nearly two thirds of women are at least 25 years old when they commit homicide. Regarding capital punishment, women are sitting on death row in 15 states, including 6 women in Florida.

Virginia law states that any motorist pulled over for driving 20 miles per hour (mph) or more over the speed limit or driving in excess of 80 mph at any speed limit (or 85 mph as of July 2020) is eligible for a reckless driving citation, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor violation. However, both law enforcement officers and the courts can use discretion to reduce the misdemeanor charge to a simple traffic infraction. In this report, researchers use data on speeding violations in 18 Virginia counties over a nine-year period to examine whether there are racial disparities in who benefits from this discretion and why these racial disparities might exist. The study found that when Virginia officers pull over a motorist for speeding in the reckless range, they can either charge the motorist with a misdemeanor or downgrade the charge to an infraction. Officers in this sample downgraded the charge to an infraction 58% of the time. Among motorists cited for speeding in a range that qualified for a misdemeanor, 36% of Black motorists were convicted of a misdemeanor, compared with 19% of White motorists. Racial disparities were present at both the law enforcement and court stages of the process. Compared with White motorists, Black motorists both were more likely to be charged with a misdemeanor by law enforcement and, conditional on being charged, were more likely to be convicted by the courts. The county in which a motorist was cited explained almost half of the racial disparity in whom law enforcement charged with a misdemeanor. About four-fifths of the racial disparity in whom the court convicted of a misdemeanor could be explained by observable case characteristics, such as whether the motorist attended the court hearing and whether a defense attorney was present.

Each year in the United States, about 600,000 people are released from state and federal prisons, and millions more are released from local jails. These men and women—known as returning citizens—face a tough transition to the community. Often with few financial resources, they must address their day-to-day needs of food, clothing, and housing; obtain identification and access to medical care; and endeavor to find employment and reconnect with family. For those released in 2020 and early 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic made the transition even more difficult. Yet federal emergency relief funds may have done little to help them, since they may not have had access to the funds if they lacked recent work histories or tax returns. In April 2020, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO—a non-profit organization that provides services to returning citizens, also known as reentry services) launched the Returning Citizens Stimulus program (RCS) in an effort to fill this gap. The Returning Citizens Stimulus program was a cash transfer program that offered financial support to returning citizens during the critical period just after their release. Participants were eligible for three monthly payments totaling up to $2,750 if they reached milestones such as preparing résumés. An evaluation of the program found the following: (1) RCS was launched on a large scale with almost no time for planning. Nevertheless, the program operated relatively smoothly overall, a notable achievement, particularly in the context of the pandemic. (2) A large majority of RCS participants reached the required milestones and received three payments. This fact means that most participants were connected to employment and financial support services as a result of the program’s milestone structure. (3) Participants reported that the RCS program helped them feel some level of financial stability in the period following incarceration. Most said that they spent the RCS funds on essential expenses such as rent, groceries, and clothing, and on personal care to prepare themselves for employment. The findings presented in this report suggest that RCS may provide a promising model for smoothing reentry from incarceration, and that more research is warranted. The program was implemented well and on a large scale very quickly, with individuals enrolled in large numbers and in varied contexts.

State policymakers recognize the economic imperative to ensure that education and training are connected to good jobs. Employers are seeking — and are often struggling — to hire appropriately skilled workers. For job seekers, the path to a good job with education beyond a high school diploma is certainly clearer than one without postsecondary education or training; however, with continually advancing technologies and employer expectations, individuals also need periodic access to additional training to upskill and reskill throughout their careers. As a result, there is both need and demand for on- and off-ramps to postsecondary education and training. This more fluid interplay requires a cultural shift so that leaders think differently about the design of education and training programs and craft policies that support more seamless transitions for individuals moving through and between education and work. To support state policymakers on this issue, the authors engaged education and workforce leaders in 2019 and again in 2021 to develop and refine four principles of policy design for connecting education to work: (1) Design policy to support the diverse needs of people engaging or reengaging with work-relevant education; (2) Formalize collaboration at the state, local and regional levels to align postsecondary credential outcomes with labor market needs; (3) Develop data infrastructure and capacity to produce timely, transparent and actionable data analysis for education and workforce stakeholders; and (4) Leverage existing funding streams to support shared policy goals. This paper details each and shares current examples from states, including Florida, which enacted House Bill 1507 to create the Office of Reimagining Education and Career Help within the governor’s office. The office is charged with increasing collaboration, leveraging workforce and economic data, and directing funding to support improved quality, equity and access to a more integrated workforce and education system for all Floridians.

Postsecondary education pays off in the labor market. With each additional level of education, workers typically earn more throughout their lifetimes. However, not all workers with higher levels of education earn more than all workers with less education. Other factors—from field of study and occupation to gender, race and ethnicity, and location—drive differences in earnings. The more reliable route to a high-paying career now requires mixing postsecondary education with the right combination of those factors, plus skills and experience. In other words, postsecondary education has become more valuable in the workforce, but its value is also part of a complex equation. Workers with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and engineering have median lifetime earnings of $3.8 million, well above the median lifetime earnings of $3.2 million for all master’s degree holders. Associate’s degree holders working in computer and mathematical occupations have median lifetime earnings of $2.8 million, the same as median lifetime earnings for all bachelor’s degree holders. In addition, earnings gaps persist by gender and race and ethnicity. Men earn more than women at the median at each level of education. Generally, women need one more degree than men to have the same earnings. Among racial and ethnic groups, White workers have the highest median earnings among workers with no more than a high school diploma and workers with a bachelor’s degree, while Asian workers have the highest median earnings at the master’s degree level. The report provides earnings across states for workers with no more than a high school diploma/GED, associate’s degrees holders, bachelor’s degrees holders, and master’s degrees holders.

From May 2020 to September 2021, Mathematica partnered with a set of nine K–12 education grantees for the Capacity Building for Strategic Learning pilot initiative. The partnership defined equity-centered strategic learning as the set of efforts that enables organizations to set goals that contribute to increased educational equity for Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty; establish hypotheses on how to reach their goals; build strong organizational culture, practices and systems that support implementing and testing those hypotheses; and use information to improve their model on an ongoing basis. Critically, the partnership believes that strong equity-centered strategic learning is demonstrated when equity is considered in not only the organization’s goal but also in its learning and decision-making approach. The initiative’s goal was to strengthen grantee capacity for equity-centered strategic learning by helping grantees scope projects in their area of need, matching grantees with providers that could help build organizational capacity, delivering cohort learning activities, and offering thought partnership. In its role as an intermediary, Mathematica facilitated activities on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. These included helping grantees identify and address their organizational needs, as well as supporting grantee-to-grantee relationships by fostering a peer-learning community that offered webinars, interactive discussions, and social events—referred to as learning activities. This toolkit can serve as a useful starting point for facilitators for similar peer-learning cohorts, and the materials are adaptable to meet the differing needs and goals of facilitators.

Federal benefit programs were established to provide financial assistance to families. But to avoid supplanting work, many programs phase out benefits as participants’ earnings rise. This can lead to high marginal tax rates – meaning large benefit reductions relative to earnings increases. In previous work, the U.S. Office of the Assistance Secretary of Planning and Evaluation found that among households with children just above poverty, the median marginal tax rate is 51%, such that for every additional dollars of earnings, families only retain 49 cents. The authors also estimated that nationwide, about 600,000 children in low-income households (below 200% of poverty) face a program cliff. A program cliff occurs when the marginal tax rate is equal to or greater than 100%, and increasing earnings would actually have the effect of reducing total net resources to the family. This brief is based on data collected from a qualitative study that sought to learn about working parents’ perceptions of marginal tax rates, and how these perceptions appeared to influence parents’ labor force decisions. In focus group discussions with 44 working parents receiving assistance from one or more federal programs, many parents shared the view that increasing earnings involves a number of risks including benefit reductions that result from increased earning, risk of subsequent earnings loss, risk of being unable to regain lost benefits following a subsequent earnings loss, risk of being unable to provide for children’s basic needs. In spite of the risks described in this brief, most participants (about 70%) said that they would nonetheless increase their earnings if presented with an opportunity.

Non-profit organizations in the United States play a vital role delivering services, strengthening communities, and facilitating civic engagement. In a nationally representative survey of non-profit organizations conducted January through April of 2021, the authors focus on operating 501(c)(3) public charities whose activities range from direct service provision to community building and advocacy. The authors provide new evidence about the non-profit sector in three ways. First, the nationally representative survey provides important data on geographic and demographic characteristics of the people and communities that non-profits serve across the United States and the demographic diversity and representation of organizations’ staff and leadership. Second, the study shows how organizations of different sizes and in different subsectors and geographic contexts have been affected by recent trends in donations and how they were affected by the events of 2020. Third, recognizing that the trends discussed are constantly changing, the study is an ongoing panel study, and future surveys will analyze longitudinal trends in organizational characteristics and donations The report also provide a public use dataset of most of the survey data collected so that others across the country can investigate questions of their own.

The public debate over disability insurance has centered on concerns about individuals without severe health conditions receiving benefits. The authors look beyond health risk alone to quantify the overall insurance value of U.S. disability programs, including value from insuring non-health risk. The authors find that disability recipients, especially those with less-severe health conditions, are much more likely to have experienced a wide variety of non-health shocks than non-recipients including job loss, productivity shocks, and changes in family structure. Compared to non-recipients, less-severe recipients are more likely to have experienced adverse non-health events, are less likely to have the resources to insure those events, and are more likely to have low earnings even if not for receiving disability benefits. Selection into disability receipt on the basis of non-health shocks is so strong among individuals with less-severe health conditions that by many measures less-severe recipients are worse off than more-severe recipients. As a result, under baseline assumptions, benefits to less-severe recipients have an annual surplus value (insurance benefit less efficiency cost) over cost-equivalent tax cuts of $7,700 per recipient, about three-fourths that of benefits to more-severe recipients ($9,900). The results suggest that insurance against non-health risk accounts for about one-half of the value of U.S. disability programs.

This report presents age-adjusted death rates by marital status (married, never married, widowed, and divorced) among adults aged 25 and over. Rates for all-cause mortality are presented for 2010–2019 and for the 10 leading causes of death for 2010 and 2019. The age-adjusted death rate for married adults aged 25 and over declined 11% between 2010 (839.8 per 100,000 standard population) and 2019 (747.0); the rate for never-married and divorced adults declined by 3% (from 1,466.1 to 1,423.2 for never-married adults, and from 1,366.5 to 1,324.0 for divorced adults); whereas the rate for widowed adults increased 4% (from 1,567.2 to 1,627.0). Married adults experienced greater declines than other marital status groups between 2010 and 2019 in age-adjusted death rates due to cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, and kidney disease, and a smaller percent increase in death rates for unintentional injury. Married adults experienced a decline in diabetes death rates between 2010 and 2019, whereas all unmarried groups experienced increases. Rates for all 10 leading causes of death in 2019 were higher among unmarried than married adults.

The purpose of this study is to identify associations between COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries and the proportion of the population fully vaccinated at the county-level between January and May 2021. The authors do so by using a combination of person-level Medicare FFS claims and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on county-level vaccination rates. Based on these results, the authors then estimated the net reduction in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among all 62.7 million Medicare beneficiaries associated with the first 5 months of the U.S.’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out. As expected, there was generally a greater reduction in cumulative COVID-19 infections, COVID-related hospitalizations, and deaths per 100,000 beneficiaries related to vaccination in states with higher average vaccination rates. The results indicate that COVID-19 vaccinations from January until May 2021 were associated with an estimated reduction of more than 265,000 COVID-19 infections and nearly 39,000 deaths among Medicare beneficiaries. Florida accounted for an estimated reduction of 17,000 COVID-19 infections, an estimated reduction of 6,700 COVID-19 hospitalizations, and an estimated reduction of 2,400 COVID-19 related deaths among Medicare beneficiaries.

Thrive Rural is an ambitious effort to create a shared framework and understanding about what it will take for communities and Native nations across the rural United States to be healthy places where everyone belongs, lives with dignity, and thrives. This report is a contribution to Thrive Rural, specifically intended to provide an understanding of the state of relevant health fields in the United States, namely public health and health care. This report aims to address the overarching question: What are the potential pathways of influence for public health and health care to foster more prosperous, equitable and sustainable communities across rural America? Through an expedited systematic review, this report draws from practice literature in the public health and health care fields on their current state and evolution, including literature that captures meetings and agenda-setting among field leaders. Key informant conversations were conducted with select field leaders in public health and health care to complement existing research and documentation. This report begins with background on the fields of public health and health care, and an overview of prevailing theories and frameworks that guide practice in these fields. That leads to a synthesis of current field trends and change strategies across public health and health care, and the report concludes with findings on drivers, or levers, for change that can influence trends and change strategies within and across fields.