Policy & Research

The Demos policy and research team develops race-forward progressive policy ideas and analysis for policymakers and grassroots organizations fighting for economic, social, and political power.

We analyze the policies, practices, and power dynamics that maintain racial inequality and exclude Americans from full participation in our economy and democracy. We produce written products that include books, reports, briefs, blog posts, op-eds, testimony and public statements that deploy facts and analysis to build a more equitable nation.

Our Impact

In recent years, Demos’ policy and research department has produced groundbreaking research that:

• Presents a positive vision of an inclusive democracy, documents the impact of undemocratic voter suppression tactics, develops policies that ensure people are able to exercise their right to vote, and makes our democracy more representative.
• Highlights the unequal burden of student loan debt and high college prices on communities of color, mainstreams the bold goal of debt-free public higher education into the political and policy debate, and pushes for reinvestment in postsecondary education for working-class students and students of color who have been locked out of traditional pathways to opportunity.
• Explores the policy decisions that continue to expand America’s massive racial wealth inequality and provides evidence that individual life choices are not sufficient to erase a century of unjust economic policies that created the wealth gap.
• Develops state-level climate equity policies and analyzes their impact on wealth-building, particularly for communities of color and low-wealth communities.
• Supports the grassroots fights of working Americans, including hotel workers and fast food workers.
• Investigates the struggles facing working families, such as the pressures that leave parents trapped between caring for their children and earning the income to support them.
• Analyzes the dynamics of racist social exclusion and the relationship between individual instances of hostility towards people of color in the United States and how that hostility is powered by public policy choices.
• Highlights the corrosive impact of big money in politics, both nationally and in local elections, while lifting up reforms that shift power from a wealthy, disproportionately white donor class to the people.