“Advancing Understanding of Racial Inequality in Poverty” with Regina Baker

Dr. Regina S. Baker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Prior to joining UNC-CH, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research seeks to understand factors that shape socioeconomic conditions and disparities in well-being across people, places, and time. She is especially interested in the role of institutional mechanisms in shaping individual outcomes and broader patterns of poverty and social inequality. Her recent and ongoing research focuses on child poverty and poverty risks, socioeconomic racial/ethnic disparities, the link between historical racism and contemporary conditions, and the politics of power in the distribution of resources and economic and health outcomes. Her work has been published in leading peer-reviewed outlets such as the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Demography, among others. She received her PhD from Duke University in 2015.