In the News

Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Southerners, Facing Big Odds, Believe in a Path Out of Poverty

July 4, 2019

The New York Times | Coverage of research by economics professor Stefanie Stantcheva (joint with Alberto Alesina and Eduardo Teso), "Intergenerational Mobility and Support for Redistirbution," first presented in the Inequality Seminar in spring 2017 and subsequently published in the American Economic Review. Also higlights the Opportunity Atlas and findings by Raj Chetty, John Friedman of Brown University, and Nathaniel Hendren of Opportunity Insights.

View the research ►

Barron's

Better Bankruptcy Laws Could Make Recessions Less Painful

June 28, 2019

Barron's | New research from Adrien Auclert of Stanford University, Will Dobbie of Harvard University, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of Yale University suggests that [a 2005 law discouraging Americans from filing for bankruptcy] worsened the downturn [in the Great Recession]  and hampered the recovery. Will Dobbie PhD 2013 is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Crystal S. Yang

Crystal Yang ’13 named professor of law at Harvard Law School

June 24, 2019

Harvard Law Today | Profile of Crystal Yang, who has been promoted to full professor at Harvard Law School. Yang received her JD and PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2013. Her teaching and research focus on empirical law and economics, particularly in the areas of criminal justice, consumer bankruptcy, and immigration and welfare policy.

Anthony Abraham Jack, The Privileged Poor

The New Yorker Recommends: "The Privileged Poor"

June 20, 2019

The New Yorker | "The lasting beauty of  [Anthony Abraham Jack's] ethnography is that it gives a voice to the students who, as his research ends up revealing, most need it," writes Eren Orbey about The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disdvantaged Students (Harvard University Press, 2019). Anthony Jack received his PhD in Sociology and 2016 and is now Assistant Professor of Education at Harvard and a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Theda Skocpol Joins Obama Presidency Oral History Advisory Board

Theda Skocpol Joins Obama Presidency Oral History Advisory Board

May 17, 2019

Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, has joined the Advisory Board for the Obama Presidency Oral History.Produced under the auspices of the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research, this archive will include more than 1,000 hours of interviews with Obama administration officials, politicians, journalists, and other key figures outside of the White House.  

... Read more via Russell Sage Foundation ▶
... View Obama Presidency Oral History Project site ▶

Robert J. Sampson

Harvard study shows the predictive power of punishing and toxic environments on children's outcomes

May 17, 2019

Harvard Gazette
Coverage of new study by Robert Manduca, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, and Robert J. Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, now out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They find that neighborhood measures of lead exposure, violence, and incarceration have strong independent predictive power, on top of standard variables, for children's life outcomes.