Jackson, M. (2020). Manifesto for a Dream. Inequality, Constraint, and Radical Reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Although it is well known that the United States has an inequality problem, the social science community has failed to mobilize in response. Social scientists have instead adopted a strikingly insipid approach to policy reform, an ostensibly science-based approach that offers incremental, narrow-gauge, and evidence-informed "interventions." This approach assumes that the best that we can do is contain the problem. It is largely taken for granted that we will never solve it.

This book makes a scientific case for large-scale institutional reform, drawing on examples from other countries to demonstrate that reforms that have been unthinkable in the United States are considered to be quite unproblematic in other contexts. An emboldened social science has an obligation to develop and test the radical policies that would be necessary for equality to be assured to all.

Jackson, M. and Lee Williams, J.  (2022).  “COVID-19 mitigation policies and psychological distress in young adults,” Social Science and Medicine - Mental Health, 100027.

Abstract: “The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unusually high proportion of the population suffering from mental health difficulties, but of particular concern is the disproportionate increase in psychological distress among younger adults. In this article, we exploit an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to examine which aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic 18-25-year-olds found most challenging. We report analyses of American Voices Project (AVP) qualitative in-depth interview data, a MyVoice text-message open-ended survey, and Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey (HPS) data, all collected in 2020. Our interview and text-message results show that young adults were distressed about the effects of COVID-19 on the health of loved ones and older Americans. Young adults expressed concerns that the pandemic was not being treated sufficiently seriously by some politicians and the general public. The policy response was seen to be inadequate to the task of containing the disease, and some feared that the pandemic would never end. Statistical analyses of the HPS confirm that young adults' scores on the HPS's anxiety scale were significantly negatively associated with state-level policy responses. Overall, our results show that young adults found virus mitigation strategies challenging, but that a strong policy response was associated with reduced levels of psychological distress. Our results suggest that public health policy might have also operated as mental health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic.”