How predictable are life trajectories? We investigated this question with a scientific mass collaboration using the common task method; 160 teams built predictive models for six life outcomes using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a high-quality birth cohort study. Despite using a rich dataset and applying machine-learning methods optimized for prediction, the best predictions were not very accurate and were only slightly better than those from a simple benchmark model. Within each outcome, prediction error was strongly associated with the family being predicted and weakly associated with the technique used to generate the prediction. Overall, these results suggest practical limits to the predictability of life outcomes in some settings and illustrate the value of mass collaborations in the social sciences.

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In the global pandemic, there is a group of people who are not socially distancing: the precariously employed, the workers who live paycheck to paycheck and lack the flexibility to stay home. In this article, readers are encouraged to consider the many social factors that can impede people from staying home.

In this article, three Latina sociologists discuss how they engage in teaching in a predominantly white discipline during a sociopolitical context of overt xenophobia and racism. Under the Trump administration, the United States has witnessed increased rates in harassment, hate crimes, and mass shootings against people of color. Despite the 2020 Presidential Democratic win, the racist ideology that led to Trump’s sway over voters demands that we continue to contend with its remnants or what some refer to as “Trumpism.” We find it critical to engage with pedagogy today more than ever as our contemporary gendered racialization and past experiences inform our teaching pedagogy. Drawing on the outsider within paradigm and critical race theory, we advocate that educators should embrace their own identities and those of students in the teaching of class and research concepts. We offer an important focus on Latina voices in the teaching of race and ethnicity at two private research universities on the West Coast and one public university in the South. We also note that to be fully able to do this type of work, we need our colleges and universities to protect Latina scholars and other faculty of color from potential backlash from students, colleagues, and community members, who may not approve of a critical pedagogy.

This brief draws on the case of Mexican immigrants, the most populous and constant remitting immigrant group in the United States, to show how remittances are a blind spot for US agencies, like the Census Bureau and IRS. Failing to account for remittance expenses likely leads to the overestimation of income and under-estimation of poverty rates in Mexican immigrant communities. Income and poverty figures of other consistent remitting immigrant groups, like other Latin American and Caribbean immigrants, may also be misestimated. There are two accessible ways to capture the impact of remittances: 1. the Census Bureau should alter the Supplemental Poverty Measure to account for international medical and childrearing expenses and 2. the IRS should allow foreign-born people to claim foreign-bound transactions of any sum that support caretaking, healthcare and education as deductions and account for them when adjusting taxable income. These changes would create a better economic portrait of immigrant communities and facilitate access to safety net programs.