Welcome to Recession Trends

The Recession Trends website is no longer being actively updated. Readers interested in up-to-date materials on Recession and Recovery should visit inequality.stanford.edu.

The ongoing economic downturn is the worst of the postwar period. It bears some similarity, at least as regards origins, to the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression, and it may well have similarly far-reaching economic and social consequences. The purpose of the Recession Trends website, which is a collaboration between the Russell Sage Foundation and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, is to monitor and report on such economic and social effects. We do so by offering two main resources: 

Recession Briefs: We offer 16 up-to-date Recession Briefs, each written by the top authority in the field, that document the effects of the downturn on wealth, consumption, the labor market, housing, poverty, the safety net, health, education, crime, attitudes, and a variety of other key domains. If you want the latest and best evidence on the effects of the downturn, click here to explore our Recession Briefs.

Graphing Utility: Have you ever wondered where to go to get the best and latest trend data on the social effects of the downturn? It's here! We offer a simple-to-use graphing utility that provides customizable graphs on the key trends in each of our 16 domains. It's the most comprehensive compilation of trend data available on the social consequences of the downturn. Click here to check out our Graphing Utility.

But that's not all. We also offer a host of other resources for journalists, scholars, and anyone else interested in the social and economic effects of the downturn. We offer a series of recession-relevant podcasts, narrated by the inimitable Diantha Parker, on such topics as the destruction of household wealth, the growing number of disconnected youth, the effects of the downturn on politics, the big chill in consumer spending, the downturn in charitable giving, and much more. We also offer a clearinghouse of relevant research projects, working papers, and research summaries.

Do you want to be notified when our experts update their briefs and when new recession-relevant data are made available? Sign up here for our mailing list.