Recent civilrightsprojectucla_ds items

California’s Demographic Future: Ethnic & Racial Change in the School-Age Population

Thu, 8 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The ethnoracial composition of California has seen decades of change mainly due to large waves of immigrants from Asia and Central and South America. While many states have experienced population decline, particularly among the youth and working-age populations, California has grown. However, small changes have begun to occur within the state, including smaller migration flows and falling birth rates. Population changes among school-age children have significant policy implications for a multitude of community institutions, including education, healthcare, and community planning. What should schools and educators across California expect over the coming decades? How is the school-age population (ages 5-18) expected to change with respect to its ethnoracial composition, generational status, home language, and educational attainment? Employing an innovative microsimulation model, we project a small increase in the number of California’s school-age children in 2050 and very little...

U.S. Economic Vitality Depends on Immigration

Thu, 8 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper, “U.S. Economic Vitality Depends on Immigration,” presents a detailed analysis of population growth trends and potential impacts on labor-market projections, with particular emphasis on immigrant workers. The research examines long-term population projections, considering total fertility rates by race in the U.S. and total immigration among different racial groups, and estimates the immigration growth rate needed to stabilize the U.S. population in the long term. The research also examines labor market needs for workers, details the educational attainment of immigrants, and highlights their education and training needs. The report provides policy recommendations that encourage and prepare immigrants already in the U.S. to participate in the workforce and incentivize and support new immigration.

Investing in Our Nation’s Future: Advancing Educational Opportunity for Underserved Students

Thu, 4 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation, with individuals from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds becoming a growing majority among school age youth, adults, and overall. This shift presents both a critical opportunity and an urgent need to address persistent educational inequities that shape aggregate national outcomes. This report draws on human capital theory and benefit-cost analyses to examine the large public returns of advancing an equity-focused educational agenda that improves investments in historically underserved populations. The evidence shows that interventions such as high-quality early childhood education, high school completion initiatives, and comprehensive school supports generate significant public benefits, with benefit-cost ratios ranging from $2 to over $12 for every dollar invested. Simulations suggest that narrowing racial/ethnic educational opportunity and outcome gaps could yield between $20 billion to over $70 billion annual...

American Indian and Alaska Native Populations: Envisioning the Future

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Historically-based structural disadvantages impinge on AIAN people’s civil rights, and redressing these issues requires plausible information about the future size, age structure, and locational distribution of the population. AIAN people and Tribal Nations are also subject to statistical racism, in which their data (and thus their successes and needs) are ignored because they are relatively small populations. This report presents population projections of the racially-identified American Indian and Alaska Native population from the present to 2050 using a traditional demographic method that has been modified to account for net response change – one of the most significant data-related challenges.

The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the School-Age Population in the U.S.

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This research projects the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population over the next 3 decades, and finds that it is rapidly changing in response to decades of sustained large-scale immigration.

Discrimination in the 21st Century: How Civil Rights Policies Can Best Embrace the Growing Mixed-Race Population

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This report catalogues the growth of the modern mixed-race population in the United States and highlights the many complications this population presents for the future of civil rights law and policy. What is most distinctive of today’s mixed-race individuals is their assertion of a mixed-race identity which they claim embodies a different experience compared to those who report to be a single race such as “white” or “black.” This emphasis on personal identity presents a new dimension that must be considered in the development of new civil rights policy.