In the News

The Inequality & Social Policy community remembers Devah Pager

December 31, 2018

Devah Pager, Who Documented Race Bias in Job Market, Dies at 46.
November 8, 2018
The New York Times
Devah Pager was the Peter and Isabel Malkin professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, and director of the Inequality & Social Policy program.

Harvard, U. of Michigan partner to boost economic opportunity in Detroit

September 12, 2018

Harvard Gazette | Harvard and the University of Michigan have formed two partnerships designed to encourage economic opportunity in Detroit and to fight the national scourge of opioid addiction. The Detroit-focused partnership pairs the Equality of Opportunity Project — led by Harvard’s William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics Raj Chetty, Harvard economics Professor Nathaniel Hendren, and Brown University Associate Professor John Friedman — with the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions initiative, the city of Detroit, and community partners. It seeks to create interventions that can improve the livelihoods of low-income Detroit residents.

Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy Receives $2.5 Million Gift

March 27, 2018

Harvard Kennedy School | Harvard Kennedy School has received a $2.5 million gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation to support new and ongoing work to address wealth concentration and the broader problems of inequality. The gift supports the research and outreach efforts at the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, which serves as a nexus for work on inequality across the university. The program brings together Harvard faculty and PhD students from the social sciences who are exploring issues such as income inequality and wealth concentration, poverty and justice, opportunity and intergenerational mobility, and inequalities of race and place. Read more »

HKS Receives $2.5 Million for Economic Inequality Research

March 27, 2018

The Harvard Crimson | The gift will support the work of over 40 Harvard doctoral students in the social sciences who will be known as Stone PhD Scholars in Inequality and Wealth Concentration. The donation also establishes the Stone Senior Scholars program—an initiative which will invite 12 leading scholars of inequality to give lectures and coordinate events about economic opportunity and income inequality—and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Lecture, a series of public lectures around economic inequality across the world. French economist Thomas Piketty will deliver the first lecture of the Stone series Friday at the Kennedy School’s JFK Forum.

Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys

March 19, 2018

The New York Times | Coverage of "Race and Opportunity in the United States," a new study by Raj Chetty (Stanford University), Nathaniel Hendren (Harvard University), Maggie R. Jones (U.S. Census Bureau), and Sonja R. Porter (U.S. Census Bureau). Nathaniel Hendren presented this work in the Harvard Inequality Seminar on March 26, 2018. Learn more about the research:
View non-technical summary
View the full paper

Wielding Data, Women Force a Reckoning Over Bias in the Economics Field

January 10, 2018

The New York Times | Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard, pointed to a recent study by Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellow Heather Sarsons that found that women get significantly less credit than men when they co-write papers with them, as reflected in the way the paper affects their chances of receiving tenure. Heather Sarsons is a PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard.
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The Real Future of Work

January 4, 2018

Politico Magazine | Forget automation. The workplace is already cracking up in profound ways. A look at what a study by Lawrence Katz (Harvard Economics) and Alan Krueger (Princeton Economics) found about the rise in the contingent workforce and alternative work arrangements in the U.S. over the past two decades. The Katz-Krueger study is forthcoming in ILR Review.
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How much does a college matter in getting a student to commencement?

December 29, 2017

Washington Post | Discusses study by Joshua S. Goodman and colleagues, which suggests that the college "matters more than we might think, particularly when it comes to academically marginal students."The study, authored by Joshua Goodman of the Harvard Kenenedy School and Michael Hurwitz and Jonathan Smith of the College Board, appears in the Journal of Labor Economics.
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Supreme Court justices may give away their votes with their voices

December 21, 2017

The Economist | Political scientists hit upon a surprisingly reliable signal of how the high court will rule. Maya Sen talks about her new study, joint with Bryce J. Dietrich and Harvard colleague Ryan D. Enos, forthcoming in Political Analysis. Sen is Associate Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Enos is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard.
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Inefficient equilibrium: Women and economics

December 19, 2017

The Economist | An analysis of women's underrepresentation in economics and what the research tells us. Discusses research of Heather Sarsons, a PhD candidate in Economics, who investigated gender differences in who gets credit for jointly-authored work. Also notes steps that David Laibson, as chair of the Harvard economics department, has taken to address such issues as implicit bias in faculty search and promotion committees.

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