USC Equity Research Institute (ERI)

Equity Matters 2024 launched in partnership with the Fund for Santa Barbara, the UCSB Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, and the USC Equity Research Institute is an update of Towards a Just and Equitable Central Coast (2021). This report includes San Luis Obispo County in addition to Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, providing a fuller picture of trends that span the tri-county region.

This research project aims to deepen our understanding of regional disparities, foster meaningful dialogue, and inform strategies that advance social, health, environmental, and economic equity.

Los Angeles County is home to many diverse Indigenous Migrant communities from what is now known as Mexico and Central America however data and reports on Latinx immigrant communities as a whole often obscures and effectively erases these communities in their analysis. A newly released report,  “Indigenous Migrants in Los Angeles County” provides an opportunity to learn more about these diverse communities through the work of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), an Indigenous women-led community-based organization, and preliminary research conducted by CIELO and the USC Equity Research Center. Community data gathering efforts such as survey data from CIELO’s outreach events offer a unique opportunity to better understand the diversity of Indigenous Migrant communities throughout Los Angeles County.

We offer this guide for movement builders and philanthropic allies who are looking for indicators to track changes, shifts, and transformations in California’s power-building infrastructure. It is based on developments in the power-building field in California, national reports on power-building metrics, and interviews with California-based advisors and partners. While there is a wide breadth of measures to collect and track, we focus on a specific set of strategies that power-building groups are deploying and evolving over the next decade—and thus shaping the types of learning and evaluative measures and indicators.

In July 2021, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion that adopted the recommendations of the L.A. County Office of Immigrant Affairs (OIA) to create the RepresentLA program, building on its predecessor, the Los Angeles Justice Fund. Adopting the framework set forth in the report titled, Proposal for a Los Angeles Immigrant Community Legal Defense Program, RepresentLA is a merit-blind program that provides funds to organizations providing legal representation for removal defense and affirmative immigration relief, as well as social support services for clients and their families.

As the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in the United States, largely contributed by increasing migration from Asia, Asian Americans are estimated to be the largest immigrant group in the country by 2055. The growing and increasingly diverse population contributes to an expanding interest and need to understand the nuanced experiences of Asian American immigrants, including their pathways to citizenship. Given the existing citizenship regime in the United States, naturalization is an essential process for immigrants and their social, economic, and political inclusion. The benefits of naturalization include the right to vote, improved potential to sponsor family members, expanded eligibility for social services, and access to jobs that require citizenship. Though the benefits of naturalizing are multifold for immigrants and their inclusion, improving access to naturalization also facilitates a more representative and democratic society. In this report, we take a mixed-methods approach to explore the drivers and barriers to naturalization. Our report dives into the nuanced pathways to citizenship for Asian American immigrants, using statistical modeling, surveys, and interviews to tease out the differences in experience due to ethnicity, migration history, socioeconomic status, gender, age, and more.

Release date: July 11, 2024

Amidst a pivotal election year, the 5th Annual State of Immigrants in Los Angeles (SOILA) County report uplifts remarkable strides made across Los Angeles County to advance immigrant inclusion by highlighting the realities that immigrants experience in our county—through rigorously produced data analysis—and by providing local leadership with enough direction to make tangible and meaningful change.

Different from previous years’ SOILA reports, through a publicly available online survey, we turned to immigrant communities themselves to share with us how they are feeling and faring in the county. We used that data to understand the perspectives of immigrants and their descendants, as well as to build our recommendations for this momentous year.

The National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) and USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute (ERI) released a policy brief in April 2024 titled, Naturalize Now: Economic Equity and the Path to Naturalization.

The brief highlights ERI data analysis on the impact of the recently announced changes to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) naturalization fee structure. Our findings show there are an additional 1.8 million eligible-to-naturalize people who newly qualify for the reduced N-400 naturalization fee.

The California Climate Investments (CCI) are turning 10. After a decade of investments and nearly $10 billion implemented throughout the state, is CCI delivering on its promise? Does it drive benefits to environmental justice communities that are the most vulnerable to pollution, have the fewest resources to adapt to climate change, and the least political power to attract these dollars? Do these communities feel the impact of these dollars? In this report done in partnership with The Greenlining Institute, ERI’s research team strives to answer these questions, particularly in light of unprecedented federal funding for climate investments.

Catalyzing Community-Centered Redistricting for Racial Equity: Lessons from Fair Representation in Redistricting is an important read for those who care about the future of our democracy—and want to find ways to get involved in redistricting. For the 2021-2022 redistricting cycle, a set of philanthropic leaders formed Fair Representation in Redistricting (FRR), a strategy to support historically excluded and under-represented communities to be active and influential players in advancing fair redistricting in states across the country.

This report describes FRR strategies and core investments, highlights the successes and challenges of catalyzing a community-centered approach to redistricting, and offers recommendations. The punchline: While a strong foundation was laid in this recent cycle, much more is needed to achieve fairer processes and outcomes. We recommend that FRR become a sustained collaborative to build upon the emerging field of community-centered redistricting it has seeded and to pair its support for the one- or two-years of line drawing with ongoing efforts to bring governing power back to the people.