Harvard Magazine | In her Baccalaureate address to graduating seniors, Harvard University President Drew Faust drew from Sendhil Mullainathan's recent column in The New York Times on the cognitive biases that shape our responses to problems of ineqauality and opportunity:

 

As one of your economics professors, Sendhil Mullainathan, recently pointed out in a column in The New York Times, we remember the headwinds that blow against us and forget the tailwinds that help us along. Notice and be grateful for those tailwinds… How often do we remind ourselves that to some degree we won a global lottery over which we had no control?… “The most important things that happened to me here happened to me by accident,” one of you said. There is a responsibility that comes with recognizing that.

The Weekly Standard | Review of George J. Borjas's book, We Wanted Workers (W.W. Norton, 2016). Borjas is Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

The Economist | Cites study by Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, which examined the job performance of former felons in the U.S. Army.

The Economist | Cites Todd Rogers, Associate Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Also features work in which Elizabeth Linos (PhD '16) of  Behavioural Insights Team North America participated, a collaboration with the Chattanooga Police Department to attract more minority applicants to the force. (Read a detailed account of the Chattanooga experiment, including an interview with Linos, which appeared earlier this year in Quartz).

Russell Sage Foundation | Helen Marrow (PhD '07), Associate Professor of Sociology at Tufts University, has been selected to be a Visiting Researcher at the Russell Sage Foundation in 2017-2018. While in residence, she will work on her next book on Immigrant-Native Relations in 21st Century America. The book is a collaborative project with scholars Dina Okamato of Indiana University, Linda Tropp of University of Massachsuetts-Amherst, and Michael Jones-Correa of University of Pennsylvania. Read more about Helen Marrow's work:
helenmarrow.com

G20 Insights | Carlos Lastra-Anadón, PhD candidate in Government & Social Policy, has co-authored a policy brief that has been selected to appear in "20 Solution Proposals for the G20" to be circulated to summit participants at the G20 Hamburg summit, July 7-8, 2017. Theirs is one of 20 policy recommendations "chosen for their novelty, implementability, and relevance to the G20 during the German presidency."

The brief is co-authored by Manuel Muñiz (Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University), Karl Kaiser (Harvard University), Henning Meyer (London School of Economics), and Manuel Torres (Accenture).

Université de Bordeaux | Harvard sociologist Michèle Lamont is the recipient of the Doctorate Honoris Causa, conferred by the Université de Bordeaux in a ceremony and conference held June 14th. The honorary title is awarded to persons of foreign nationality for outstanding service in the arts, letters, sciences, and technology.

Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies. She serves as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017.

Awardee | Hope Harvey, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, has been awarded the 2017 Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Family Division Graduate Student Paper Prize for her paper, "When Mothers Can’t ‘Pay the Cost to be the Boss’: Roles and Identity within Doubled-Up Households." Read more about Hope Harvey's work at her homepage.
scholar.harvard.edu/hopeharvey

Russell Sage Foundation | The Russell Sage Foundation announced four new awards from its small grant competition in intergenerational mobility, three of which will support research by Harvard Inequality & Social Policy affiliates:

• Ellora Derenoncourt (Harvard University)
  Did Great Migration Destinations become Mobility Traps?
  Ellora Derenoncourt is a PhD candidate in Economics.
   
• Ryan D. Enos (Harvard University)
  Do Public Works Programs Increase Intergenerational Mobility? Evidence from the Works Progress Administration
  Ryan Enos is Associate Professor of Government.
   
• James J. Feigenbaum (Princeton University), Maximillian Hell (Stanford University), and Robert Manduca (Harvard University)
  The American Dream in the Great Depression: Absolute Income Mobility in the United States, 1915-1940
  James Feigenbaum (Harvard PhD '16) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University. In fall 2017 he will join the Boston University faculty as Assistant Professor of Economics. Maximillian Hell is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Stanford University.  Robert Manduca is a PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy at Harvard University.

Read the project abstracts

Awardee | Matthew Desmond receives 2017 top honor for Evicted, announced today by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.
 

Harvard Magazine | Devah Pager, Leah Wright Rigueur, and Alexandra Killewald are featured among the 52 fellows who will be in residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for the 2017-2018 academic year. 

Devah Pager, director of the the Inequality & Social Policy program and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, will investigate "Race, Discrimination, and the Search for Work." Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, whose work focuses on race and the American political system, will be conducting research for her project “Black Men in a White House.” Sociology professor Alexandra Killewald’s project, “Tethered Lives: How the Male Breadwinner Norm Constrains Men and Women” will build off of her research, which focuses on the work-family intersection and the effects of marriage and parenting on income.
View the full list of fellows

Awardee | Hope Harvey, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy is one of three Harvard University doctoral students selected to be a Graduate Student Fellow in the 2017-2018 class of Radcliffe Fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Hope will spend the year completing her dissertation, Exploring the Impacts of Doubling Up on American Families, with a Radcliffe Institute Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Learn more about Hope's work at her...

Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, announced the launch of a new initiative - Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) - a network of academic economists dedicated to producing creative policy ideas for an inclusive society and economy. Co-directing the initiative are Dani Rodrik, Suresh Naidu of Columbia University, and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley. Download the (free) EfIP eBook: Economics for Inclusive Prosperity: An Introduction and policy briefs.

View the EfIP eBook (pdf) ▶ 
View all policy briefs ▶

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs PhD 2008, Senior Director for Family Economic Security, Washington Center for Economic Growth.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Robert Manduca, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. This article summarizes findings from “Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities” in Sociological Science. 

... View the research ▶

US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty | The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty is a collaboration of 24 leading scholars, policy experts, and practitioners tasked with answering one big, bold, and exciting question: What would it take to dramatically increase mobility from poverty? This two-year project was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Co-authored by David T. Ellwood, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Nisha G. Patel, Executive Director of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, Urban Institute

• Read the press release
• Download the full report
• Watch the overview video