Research

The USC Price Center for Social Innovation brings an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach to social innovation research. Through relevant, rigorous research, Price Center faculty explore a variety of topics that seek to inform and advance new models of equity and opportunity for low-income children and families.

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Emergency Aid Programs at USC and LACCD

Education

An Evaluation of the Emergency Aid Programs at the University of Southern California and Los Angeles Community College District

In its third year of implementation, the Leonetti/ O’Connell Family Foundation’s emergency aid programs at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) have continued to provide direct cash assistance to students experiencing financial hardships.

Research

Housing Instability

Accelerating Employment Retention Strategies for the Precariously Housed

This report outlines the findings from the project’s activities including an employer survey, Innovation Lab sessions, and case studies

Research

The Segregation Index

The Segregation Index will be a comprehensive resource for tracking neighborhood and school segregation in the U.S., across every neighborhood and every school.

Research

Inequality

Resilience and Rebuilding: Recommendations for an Equitable Recovery in South L.A.

This report examines ways to improve pandemic recovery and to remove pre-pandemic barriers in South Los Angeles.

Research

Inequality

Examining the Complex Social Safety Net For Low-Income Working Families

This report examines the resources and benefits available to families and identifies the points at which the social safety net may become a barrier to economic independence.

Research

Criminal Justice

Literature Review: Fair Chance Policy Impacts

This literature review examines the implementation of Fair Chance and Ban the Box laws and their subsequent impact on justice-involved individuals, employers and their communities.

Research SIB

Social Innovation

Social Impact Bonds 2.0

The complexity of social problems, paired with constrained public resources, requires social innovators to identify new approaches for financing the delivery of social services.

Explore Social Innovation Research

Social innovation uses a flexible, responsive approach built upon an iterative process of concurrent problem identification, design, implementation, and evaluation of pilot programs and other test strategies, with the ultimate goal of diffusing new practices into systems change.

Social innovation includes a wide range of new organizational structures, financial tools, and partnership models that are more effective, equitable, and sustainable than existing problem solving approaches.

Research Topics

The Price Center conducts substantive social innovation research on a variety of complex, persistence social problems. Explore our work below, which includes projects representing the full social innovation ecosystem, from problem identification to piloting, scaling, and diffusing new models and processes to create social change in the following areas.

Inequality

Housing Instability

Education

Criminal Justice