CID Speaker Series
Health Insurance, the Affordable Care Act and Black-White Inequalities in Poverty
David Brady
When
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Noon–1:30 p.m.
About the event
Abstract: Black-white inequalities in poverty are large, persistent, and consequential. Yet little research on these inequalities incorporates health insurance into poverty measurement. Building on advances in incorporating health insurance into income, this study tests whether valuing health insurance and Medicaid expansions through the Affordable Care Act reduced Black-white inequalities in poverty. It analyzes within-person, within-state, within-year variation among Black and white individuals under age 65 from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The findings show that augmented poverty measures produce a smaller Black-white poverty gap and that state-level Medicaid expansions significantly reduced Black poverty without affecting white poverty.
About the speaker
Join the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics as we host David Brady, professor of public policy and management at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy, for “Health Insurance, the Affordable Care Act and Black-White Inequalities in Poverty.”
David Brady is Professor of Public Policy & Management at the USC Price School of Public Policy. He earned his PhD in Sociology & Public Affairs at Indiana University and previously worked at Duke University, the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Rich Democracies, Poor People and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty. He currently studies poverty, social policy, racial inequality, immigration, and policymaking.
Links
USC Price faculty profile
Personal website
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