California Policy Lab

📰 : NEWS: A new California Policy Lab report and policy brief show the earnings and employment impacts from the City of LA's minimum wage ordinance: “Our research shows the City of Los Angeles’ minimum wage ordinance was successful at increasing the earnings of workers in the food services industry,” explains co-author Till Von Wachter, a UCLA economics professor and the faculty director of the California Policy Lab’s UCLA site. “In contrast, we found no evidence that employment levels were impacted by the ordinance." #LosAngeles #California #MinimumWage https://lnkd.in/gtPUTqcS

We just added 30+ publications that use the California Policy Lab's University of California Consumer Credit Panel. These research projects focus on a wide range of issues impacting financial well-being. https://lnkd.in/ggDKDpUr See research on: -> auto debt in California -> student debt -> debt collection -> "buy now, pay later" loans -> homeownership + bankruptcy ->mortgage "interest rate lock"

What's happening in policy-focused research in California? We're glad you asked! Read about new trends in lending, "short" stays in prison, new funding for CPL, and meet our newest Graduate Student Researcher, Jacob Morris. https://lnkd.in/gHZsdQGR Sign up here to receive this monthly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gR6NHPwZ

Policy-focused researcher? The California Policy Lab manages a number of datasets on criminal justice reform, the social safety net, health, and financial well-being that may be of interest. Sept 30th is the next application deadline for the Safety Net dataset. Learn more about these and other opportunities: https://lnkd.in/gDFvqB4n

How are Californians doing financially? Our snapshot highlights 3 trends from Q2 2024 in student loan payments, new car loans and mortgages. These are from our interactive California Credit Dashboard, which tracks 6 types of debt and can be sorted by age group, economic region, and credit score: https://lnkd.in/gsDAcaBV

A new "By The Numbers" Fact Sheet shows that the share of people who were released from California prisons after a "short stay" (defined as 1 year or less) has increased from about 1/3 of all releases in 2014 to about 1/2 of all releases in 2023: https://lnkd.in/gkiZX7Er

"Strong relationships between counties and campuses emerged as a powerful strategy for increasing enrollment. Where these relationships are strong, campus and county representatives work together to understand and adapt to new policies (e.g., expanded eligibility during the pandemic), strategize to increase enrollment, and resolve issues with individual cases." In a new blog post, Jennifer Hogg, who manages our Student Supports Initiative, shares ways that community colleges and universities are increasing #CalFresh enrollment.

CPL’s research infrastructure not only powers CPL’s research, but also facilitates “hosted” projects by external researchers. This streamlines the process for researchers to start and execute research projects, making more policy-focused research possible on faster timelines. Learn more about CPL's hosted projects in our monthly newsletter, along with job openings and more: https://lnkd.in/gs3UFpr7

“A common critique of reforming bail policies is that reforms will lead to increases in crime, but that’s not what we found,” explains co-author Dr. Johanna Lacoe, Research Director of the California Policy Lab's University of California, Berkeley site. “Not surprisingly, the bail policy changes impacted the number of people who are held in jail, but for the most part, we didn’t see statistically significant changes in total crime reports or arrests following these bail policy changes.” Read our new report, focused on 3 recent bail policy changes in #LosAngeles, and the short-term impacts on jail populations, crime, and arrests: https://lnkd.in/g6iEBzJf

"By linking this data, we helped measure how many Californians receiving safety-net benefits were at risk of not receiving federal stimulus payments, the state Earned Income Tax Credit, and the advanced Child Tax Credit – resulting in millions of dollars of federal aid delivered to non-filing Californians." Linking together data is powerful strategy we employ for supporting efforts to make programs more accessible and increase take-up. The California Policy Lab's Data Linking Toolkit includes a guide for agency leaders, a technical guide for analysts, as well as repository of sample code: https://lnkd.in/dPVTnrch