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Recent Scientific Accomplishments Iceland’s research revolves around issues of poverty and residential segregation in the United States. In each of these two areas, his research focuses on: 1) understanding basic patterns and trends, 2) measurement issues, and 3) causes. For example, his book, Poverty in America (2003, 2nd edition 2006), covers all three issues, and also discusses alternative policy responses to poverty problems. In a 2003 paper published in Demography, he compared the relative effect of income growth, economic inequality, and changes in family structure on trends in poverty over the 1949 to 1999 period. He found that the effect of changes in family structure, while not unimportant, has been overstated in the literature and certainly in political debates on the issue. In addition to appearing in Demography, his research has been published in other highly-regarded journals such as the Journal of Human Resources and Social Science Quarterly. In the area of segregation, Iceland co-authored a 2002 Census Bureau monograph, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States, 1980-2000, and his work since then has examined the importance of socioeconomic differences between groups and continued immigration for shaping current residential patterns. His work has shown that higher socioeconomic status (SES) minority group members tend to be less segregated from Whites than low-SES minority group members. It has also indicated that, as might be expected, newly-arrived immigrants are more segregated from Whites than those who have been in the country longer. Overall, he finds that residential patterns of Asians and Hispanics tend to be consistent with “spatial assimilation?perspectives, while the patterns for Blacks are less (but increasingly) so. His work on segregation has been published in Demography, Social Science Research, and Social Problems. Over the last three years, Iceland was principal investigator (PI) on a contract from the U.S. Census Bureau to study the residential patterns of immigrants in the U.S. (2003-2005). He is currently PI on his first NIH grant, an R01 to study residential segregation (NICHD, 2006-2008). He also works on a contract from the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau to improve internal historical CPS and SIPP data, as part of an effort to document and improve the usability of Census Bureau datasets (2004-2007). Over the next few years, Iceland’s research agenda will continue to revolve around poverty and residential segregation issues. His ongoing work on poverty, for example, examines the association between poverty and other material well-being measures (such as food security and housing problems), and their joint effect on people’s mental health. He will continue his work on the residential patterns of immigrants in the United States, and is developing projects that look at longer-term trends in residential inequality, and the role of socioeconomic differences between groups in shaping residential patterns. | ||||||||
Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743