The Samuel DuBois Cook Center is a scholarly collaborative that studies the causes and consequences of inequality and develops remedies for these disparities and their adverse effects.
Three collaborators at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center for Social Equity at Duke University have published a new paper showing that the modern racial wealth gap is in fact growing, in large part because of the cumulative impact of the country’s racial history, and intergenerational transfers of wealth from older generations to younger ones. “When…
By Rachel Ruff Durham, NC – This April at Duke University’s Levine Science Research Center, students from the Global Inequality Research Initiative (GIRI) course presented their capstone projects, bringing to life their semester-long investigations into gender and development. This class, part of the broader educational programming from the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity…
Cook Center Associate Director of Research, Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards, has co-authored a research article in PLOS ONE titled, “Homophily and social mixing in a small community: Implications for infectious disease transmission“. Dr. Bentley-Edwards and her co-authors explored how people in a small, diverse community interact and what this means for the spread of diseases like…
Founding Director William A. Darity Jr. was interviewed for a Forbes Talk by Ali Jackson-Jolley to discuss what economic freedom looks like in 2026. Dr. Darity is one of the leading voices in academia advancing the case for Black reparations in the U.S. He co-authored From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the…
A recent feature highlighted how Kisha N. Daniels, associate professor of the practice in education, continues to expand the reach of her service‑learning course, The Critical Pedagogy of Hip Hop, through community‑centered partnerships with Durham Public Schools. The story follows a semester‑long collaboration between Daniels’ Duke students and 11th graders at Jordan High School, culminating…
A study coauthored by faculty affiliates Joaquin Alfredo‑Angel Rubalcaba and Alberto Ortega explore the effectiveness of worker‑driven social responsibility programs on infant health outcomes in migrant farmworker communities. Published in Demography, the research examines whether the Fair Food Program, a worker‑rights initiative supported by corporate premiums, has had measurable health impacts on the communities it…
