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The Mixed-Income Research Design Group (MIRDG) was established in August 2007 with the coordination of the Social Science Research Council and funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The charge to the group was to identify research needs and potential research strategies on the effects of mixed-income housing. The MIRDG was asked to think about research on the costs and benefits of building mixed-income housing developments in American cities, the major thrust of housing policy in the United States since the mid-1990s. Although the committee was encouraged to inform itself and think hard about mixed-income developments such as those that have been built in Chicago as part of the HOPE VI project during the recent past, it was also encouraged to think broadly about the concept of income mixing, including both intentional and “naturally” occurring mixed-income housing in various times and places.

The MIRDG comprises a diverse group of accomplished scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, economics, political science, and demography. Even within these traditional disciplines, the group members vary in their orientations between quantitative and qualitative approaches; between an emphasis on quasi-experimental testing of marginal treatment effects versus describing social phenomena at the micro-interactional, population, and comparative case study levels; and between an emphasis on inductive discovery versus deductive models and explanations. Some members of the group have years of experience doing research on housing generally and mixed-income housing issues in …