USC Equity Research Institute (ERI)

Major budget shortfalls are forcing governments and public institutions throughout California to make difficult decisions. The mounting fiscal challenges underscore the limitations of incremental budget adjustments and temporary revenue measures. There is increasing pressure to pursue new revenue options—and revisiting the structural foundations of our property tax system is one of the options likely to be considered.

Since 2015, we have estimated the potential revenue gains if commercial / industrial property were assessed at fair market value as opposed to the current system which is based on acquisition value. Our current findings: Assessing all commercial / industrial real property at fair market value could bring in an additional $18.2 billion to $25.1 billion statewide (with a mid-point estimate of $21.4 billion) in 2028-29, which is the earliest year in which such a reform could be implemented.

October 2025

The recent attacks on immigrants have harmed communities and sown fear. People are being taken in unmarked vehicles and disappeared without their right to due process. People are not going to work, businesses and restaurants are shutting down, food prices are on the rise, schools, hospitals, and churches are no longer safe.

For more on Orange County’s immigrant communities, read “Orange County’s future depends on supporting immigrants today” an Op-Ed published in the Orange County Register by Jody Agius Vallejo and Sean Angst.

July 2025

The recent attacks on immigrants have harmed communities and sown fear. People are being taken in unmarked vehicles and disappeared without their right to due process. People are not going to work, businesses and restaurants are shutting down, food prices are on the rise, schools, hospitals, and churches are no longer safe.

California is home to a very large and diverse immigrant population, including Black immigrants. Understanding the demographic, social, and economic realities of California’s Black immigrant communities is essential to advancing racial and immigrant justice statewide. The interactive charts on this webpage provide data statewide to support the lived experiences of Black immigrants. By making this data accessible, we hope to strengthen the work of advocates and community leaders, supporting their efforts to challenge inequities, push for transformative policies, and uplift the voices of Black immigrants across California.

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.

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.

July 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.