The Atlantic | Quotes George J. Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy. Borjas is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, whose report will be published later this year.

Harvard Kennedy School | Highlights work of Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab. This week's announcement of three new projects brings the total number of US Pay for Success projects to 11, seven of which have relied on GPL technical assistance. The new projects aim to reduce homelessness in Denver, provide healthier starts for low-income babies and their families in South Carolina, and to promote family stability and reduce parental substance use for families involved in Connecticut's child welfare system.

Business Insider | Spotlights research findings by Heather Sarsons, Ph.D. candidate in Economics.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs (Ph.D. '08), now Senior Director for Policy and Academic Programs at Equitable Growth. Also cites work by Inequality doctoral fellow Alex Bell (Ph.D. candidate in Economics) et. al., which finds that children of parents in the top 1% of the income distribution are ten times more likely to become inventors than those in the bottom 50%.

Harvard Gazette | Interview with Heather Sarsons, Ph.D. candidate in Economics on implications of, and the reactions to, her research—first featured in The New York Times—finding that female economists received less credit for co-authored work than their male counterparts.

Pacific Standard | Delves into new research by David J. Deming (Ph.D. '10 and Associate Professor, HGSE), co-authored with Stephen Billings (UNC Charlotte) and Stephen L. Ross (University of Connecticut), which suggests that re-segregation of American schools has consequences beyond the classroom in increasing criminal behavior. Read the NBER Working Paper.

Also highlights earlier research by Billings, Deming, and Jonah Rockoff (Ph.D. '04, now Columbia Business School), which found "the end of race-based busing widened racial inequality [in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools], despite efforts by CMS to mitigate the impact of segregation through compensatory resource allocation."

Pacific Standard | Examines new study co-authored by doctoral fellow Preeya Mbekeani (Ed.D. candidate), which found that providing four additional SAT score reports for free to low-income students increased college access and completion rates.

Washington Post | Explores new study co-authored by Stephen Billings (UNC Charlotte), David J. Deming (Ph.D. '10 and Associate Professor, HGSE), and Stephen L. Ross (University of Connecticut), who show that concentrating disadvantaged youth together in the same schools and neighborhoods increases total crime. Read the NBER Working Paper.
Also notes earlier research by Billings, Deming, and Jonah Rockoff (Ph.D. '04, now Columbia Business School), which found that attempts to mitigate the effects of segregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools by providing extra resources did help improve academic outcomes in segregated schools, but not crime.

Wall Street Journal | Differing assessments among economists, including George Borjas (Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy, HKS) and Lawrence Katz (Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics).

Harvard Business Review | Delves into research by doctoral fellow Heather Sarsons (Ph.D. candidate in Economics), which explores whether bias arising from group work explains the gender promotion gap. To view the research, see Heather Sarsons's website.

Newsweek | Quotes Brendan Saloner (Ph.D. '12, now Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) on policy responses to better meet the need for treatment of opioid addition. Saloner co-authored a study published last year that found 80 percent of people with opioid abuse disorders between 2004 and 2013 were not receiving any treatment (Read more about the study).

Pacific Standard | Research by Todd Rogers (Associate Professor of Public Policy, HKS) and Avi Feller (UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy) finds that exposing students in a massive open online course to the best of their peers' work lowers their grades and increases dropout rates.

Harvard Gazette | Featuring Inequality & Social Policy faculty participants Claudia Goldin, Nathaniel Hendren, Christopher Jencks, Lawrence Katz, Robert D. Putnam, and Theda Skocpol. Second in a series on what Harvard scholars are doing to understand and find solutions to problems of inequality. This article also appeared online at US News and World Report.

Harvard Kennedy School Magazine | Feature profile of Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, and Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

"The kind of work, or research, that we want to promote I think has a central role for the human voices and stories of the people who are experiencing criminal justice involvement, eviction and housing insecurity, and deep material deprivation,” Western says. “We thought this could come to define a style of work in the poverty field, and part of our hope for it is we could use work like this to engage a public conversation.”

Aljazeera America | Opinion piece by Sean McElwee of Demos draws on data from recent work  by Theda Skocpol (Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government & Sociology) and Alex Hertel-Fernandez (Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy).  Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez are presenting the latest version of their paper,"The Koch Effect: The Impact of a Cadre-Led Network on American Politics," at the Harvard Center for American Political Studies, Feb 12, 2016.

The New York Times | Highlights research by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes (Ph.D. '01, now Professor of Economics, Amherst College) on the effects of  childhood lead exposure on educational test scores and on behavioral outcomes in later childhood and young adulthood. View Reyes's research at her homepage.

Christopher Muller (Ph.D. '14, now a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar) will be presenting related research, "Lead Exposure and Violent Crime in the Early Twentieth Century," co-authored by James Feigenbaum (Ph.D. candidate in Economics), in the Inequality & Social Policy Seminar Series on Apr 18, 2016.

Harvard Kennedy School Magazine | Jane Mansbridge on the vanishing art and science of political compromise. Mansbridge and Cathie Jo Martin (Boston University) are the editors of Political Negotiation, published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2015.  Doctoral fellow Chase Foster (Ph.D. candidate in Government), Mansbridge, and Martin co-authored chapter 4 in the book, "Negotiation Myopia."

"The stakes are now higher than ever, Mansbridge argues...'The idea is that when we design institutions we should be thinking consciously of how to design them to be partial cures for the mistakes our brains habitually make,' says Mansbridge. 'That’s how you get the rules of political engagement.'"

Harvard Kennedy School Magazine | Delves into Leah Wright Rigueur's new book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Princeton University Press. Rigueur is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Urban Institute
The Urban Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the establishment of the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, aimed at discovering permanent ladders of mobility out of poverty in the U.S.

David Ellwood, the Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, will chair the national group of 24 leading  voices on these issues, which also includes Lawrence F. Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard University; Kathryn Edin, former director of the Inequality & Social Policy program, now Johns Hopkins University; and Raj Chetty of Stanford University. "We hope that as a result, we can reset our country's approach to social mobility," Ellwood said.

The New York Times | Quotes Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, and explains the study that changed his mind about the value of high deductibles. 

Awardees | The Law and Society Association has awarded Matthew Clair, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, and Alix Winter, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, its John Hope Franklin Prize for the best article on race, racism, and the law published in the past two years. The article, How Judges Think about Racial Disparties: Situational Decision-Making in the Criminal Justice System, "reveals that judges who routinely impose sentences with a differential racial impact sometimes intervene to mitigate the effects, and in many cases, justify decision making that continues to perpetuate disparities," in the words of the award citation. In so doing, "this article provides valuable new insights into the legal consciousness of elite actors and their thinking about the discriminatory impact of their decisions."
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Awardee | Torben Iversen, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, is one of 228 newly-elected members to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780, membership in the Academy recognizes "some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, as well as civic, business, and philanthropic leaders."
View the 2017 class by field

Awardee | Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. The award citation lauded Desmond's book "as a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty." Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Natasha Warikoo (Ph.D. '05), Associate Professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is one of 173 scholars, artists, and scientists announced today as 2017 Guggenheim Fellows. "Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise," this year's class was selected from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Guggenheim Foundation's 93rd annual competition.

Warikoo will spend her fellowship year working on a book about racial change in suburban America. "She is studying how the settlement of the nation’s most successful immigrant groups in privileged, previously predominantly white communities shapes the nature of racial boundaries, beliefs about success and achievement, and youth cultures," notes her Guggenheim Fellow profile (Read more).

Vera Institute of Justice | The Vera Institute of Justice announced today the appointment of Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School to its board of trustees. 

PEN New England | Sociologist Matthew Desmond's Evicted has won the 2017 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction. Earlier thiis year, Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, was named the recipient of PEN America's John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.

Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, was recognized tonight with the 2016 National Books Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

"Just a few books have reframed the national conversation about poverty: How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York by Jacob Riis, The Other America by Michael Harrington, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz," wrote NBCC board member Elizabeth Taylor.

"With his ground-breaking book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond now forcefully shapes our understanding of poverty. His focus is on the dynamics of poverty, and with remarkable clarity explains why solutions directed at joblessness or low wages reflect a misunderstanding of the problem. He eloquently argues: poverty is a product of exploitation, and that eviction not just a condition of it but rather a cause of it."

Awardee | Stefanie Stantcheva, Assistant Professor of Economics, is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, an NSF-wide initiative "that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty." Stantcheva will investigate "Taxes and Innovation: Optimal Taxation and the Effects of Taxes on Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Firms' Innovation."

Awardee | Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, has been selected to receive Columbia University Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service, the highest honor it bestows. Muhammad will be honored and address the graduates at TC's doctoral hooding ceremony on May 17.

Washington Post | By Shom Mazumder, PhD candidate in Government and a James M. and Cathleen D. Stone PhD Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration.

The New York Times | By Anthony Abraham Jack, PhD '16. It is one thing to extend coveted invitations to poor students in recruiting them, writes Jack. it's another to really prepare for their arrival. Jack is a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The New York Times | By James Feigenbaum PhD 2016, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez PhD 2016,  and Vanessa Williamson PhD 2015. Based on the authors' NBER paper, "From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Downstream Effects of Right to Work Laws."

James Feigenbaum received his PhD in Economics from Harvard and is now Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez received his PhD in Government and Social Policy from Harvard and is now Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Vanessa Williams received her PhD in Government and Social Policy from Harvard and is now a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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The New York Times | By James Feigenbaum (PhD '16), Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (PhD '16), and Vanessa Williamson (PhD '15). James Feigenbaum, Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University; Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Asssistant Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University; and Vanessa Williamson, a Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, are members of the Scholars Strategy Network.

Based on the authors' research, "From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Political Effects of Right to Work Laws," recently released as an NBER Working Paper.
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Boston Review | By Thad Williamson (PhD '04). Today it is hard not to fear that the persistence of racial injustice and U.S. poverty is anything but a permanent feature of our democracy, writes Williamson, in his review essay of Tommie Shelby's Dark Ghettos. "The lopsided distribution of wealth characteristic of U.S. capitalism must be on the table in any discussion about realizing social justice—including the discussion of ghetto poverty."

Thad Williamson is Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law at the University of Richmond and co-editor of Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond. In 2014-2016, Williamson served as the first director of the City of Richmond's Office of Community Wealth Building while on leave from the University of Richmond.

Harvard Kennedy School | "Low incomes, limited financial literacy, fraud, and deception are just a few of the many intractable economic and social factors that contribute to the financial difficulties that households face today...But poor financial outcomes also result from systematic psychological tendencies," some of which may be countered with government interventions that are both low-cost and scalable," Harvard Kennedy School Professor Brigitte Madrian and co-authors write in the latest issue of Behavioral Science & Policy. Their article outlines a set of interventions that the federal government "could feasibly test or implement to improve household nancial outcomes in a variety of domains: retirement, short-term savings, debt management, the take-up of government benefits, and tax optimization." 
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Kellogg Insight | Based on the research of Carola Frydman (PhD 2006) and Dimitris Papanikolaou. Carola Frydman is Associate Professor of Finance in the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. View the research: “In Search of Ideas: Technological Innovation and Executive Pay Inequality.” Journal of Financial Economics (Oct 2018).

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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).

Microeconomic Insights | By Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. "How much of the earnings gap between men and women is because the latter choose jobs and occupations that enable flexibility in their work, predictability in their hours and bounds on their work schedule?," ask Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. Here they summarize their recent article by the same title, pubilshed in 2016 in the Journal of Labor Economics.
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