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Latest Inequality & Social Policy In the News

Trump and Apocalyptic Thinking

Trump and Apocalyptic Thinking

November 10, 2016

Harvard Magazine | Coverage of "Dark and Stormy: Reflections on the Election,” a panel discussion with Harvard faculty members Jill Lepore (Kemper Professor of American History), David Laibson (Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics), and Danielle Allen (Professor of Government and Director of the Safra Center for Ethics), hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center.
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Faculty Analyze Climate Around Trump’s Victory

Faculty Analyze Climate Around Trump’s Victory

November 10, 2016

Harvard Crimson | Government professor Danielle Allen, economics professor David Laibson, and History professor Jill Lepore sat down to talk economics, politics, and demographics in the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump's victory for a panel sponsored by Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center.
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How Do We Unlearn Racism?

How Do We Unlearn Racism?

November 9, 2016

Complex | "Can our racism be unlearned? Experts believe perhaps it can, but that work starts with a better understanding of the nation's history." Features Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of Race, History, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Why neither Trump nor Clinton’s plans will fix Social Security

Why neither Trump nor Clinton’s plans will fix Social Security

November 7, 2016

MarketWatch | Features Harvard Kennedy School professor Brigitte Madrian on policy measures that would specifically address the solvency of the Social Security system. Madrian was a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings, which recently issued the report cited in the article.

Schools that Work

Schools that Work

November 4, 2016

The New York Times | Sunday Review column by David Leonhardt highlights new evidence, "among the most rigorous," by Joshua Angrist (MIT), Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15, now Columbia University), Susan Dynarski (University of Michigan), Parag Pathak (MIT), and Christopher Walters (UC Berkeley) showing impressive results from Boston's charter high schools. Among their findings, the article notes that "Boston's charters eliminate one-third to one-half of the white-black test-score gap in a single year."

“Relative to other things that social scientists and education policy people have tried to boost performance—class sizes, tracking, new buildings—these schools are producing spectacular gains,” said Angrist.
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How Are Those 27 Million Latino Voters Doing?

How Are Those 27 Million Latino Voters Doing?

November 4, 2016

Bloomberg | Immigrants are rapidly closing the gap with longtime Americans, reports Bloomberg, highlighting "one of the most comprehensive studies [of Latino assimilation]  in recent years" by Van C. Tran (Ph.D. '11), Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. The study is co-authored by Nicol Valdez, a doctoral student at Columbia.
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What's your ideal community? The answer is political

What's your ideal community? The answer is political

November 3, 2016

The New York Times | Features research by Ryan D. Enos, Associate Professor of Government, who "simulated the effects of added diversity in white suburbs by hiring Spanish speakers to board commuter trains outside Boston...'There are a lot of things we can experiment on, but context in itself is this widely diffuse and complex thing,' Mr. Enos said. Nailing down how we’re shaped by it, he said, 'is the most impossible problem in social science.'"
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How Many Charter Schools are Too Many?

How Many Charter Schools are Too Many?

November 3, 2016

Boston Globe | Features new paper by Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15), Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and co-authors Elizabeth Setren (MIT), and Christopher Walters (UC Berkeley), "Can Successful Schools Replicate?: Scaling Up Boston's Charter School Sector."
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Michèle Lamont delivers keynote at COES-LSE Inequalities conference in Santiago

Michèle Lamont delivers keynote at COES-LSE Inequalities conference in Santiago

November 2, 2016

COES-LSE | Michèle Lamont gave the first keynote presentation at the 2016 COES-LSE Inequalities conference, an international conference jointly held by The Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies-COES and the International Inequalities Institute-LSE in Santiago, Chile, November 2-4, 2016. Lamont spoke on Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel, her new book published in September by Princeton University Press. The book is co-authored with a team of sociologists, including former Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows Graziella Moraes Silva (Ph.D. '10) and Jessica S. Welburn (Ph.D. '11), as well as Joshua Guetzkow, Nissim Mizrachi, Hanna Herzog & Elisa Reis. Lamont is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and of African and African American studies at Harvard University.

Vote 'yes' on Question 2

Vote 'yes' on Question 2

October 30, 2016

Boston Globe | Boston Globe editorial urges lifting the charter school cap, citing research by Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15), Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and co-authors Joshua Angrist, Susan Dynarski, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walter. The research, "Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston’s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice, appears in the Journal of Labor Economics 34,2 (2016).
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Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty

Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty

October 28, 2016

The New York Times | Quotes Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics."In the 1950s, says Lawrence Katz, a prominent labor economist at Harvard, nearly one-third of the men who went to work after high school were employed in factories. Those jobs and that era are never coming back, Mr. Katz said, 'but a job as a physical therapist or a home health aide doesn’t fit the identity of someone who is a welder or a machinist...I call it an identity mismatch, and I think it’s a huge issue for men,' Mr. Katz said. 'Pure physical labor isn’t much valued today, but we need to try and rebuild the service sector for men without college degrees.'”... Read more about Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty

The two reasons it really is harder to get a job than it used to be

The two reasons it really is harder to get a job than it used to be

October 28, 2016

Washington Post | Cites research on employer "upskilling" by Alicia Sasser Modestino (Ph.D. '01), Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics at Northeastern University and Associate Director of its Dukakis Center; Daniel Shoag (PhD. '11), Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Joshua Ballance of the Boston Fed. "Upskilling: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Workers Are Plentiful."
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We Put Financial Advisers to the Test—And They Failed

We Put Financial Advisers to the Test—And They Failed

October 27, 2016

Wall Street Journal | Antoinette Schoar of MIT Sloan writes about her research with Harvard's Sendhil Mullainathan (Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics) and Markus Noeth of Hamburg University. "We sent “mystery shoppers” to financial advisers in the greater Boston area who impersonated regular customers seeking advice on how to invest their retirement savings outside of their 401(k) plans...What we learned is highly troubling."

Book of the Week: The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions and Meritocracy at Elite Universities, by Natasha K. Warikoo

Book of the Week: The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions and Meritocracy at Elite Universities, by Natasha K. Warikoo

October 27, 2016

Times Higher Education | Review of The Diversity Bargain, by Natasha Warikoo (Ph.D. '05), Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "Here, Warikoo explores how such inequalities [in higher education] persist, particularly in relation to students’ understandings of race, meritocracy and inequality in elite universities in the US and the UK. By using the concept of “race frames” (lenses through which we observe, interpret and respond to our world), Warikoo considers the role of family, schooling and history in shaping how we see the world." The Diversity Bargain was just released earlier this month by the University of Chicago Press.

Educator-researcher partnerships show promise in HISD

Educator-researcher partnerships show promise in HISD

October 26, 2016

Houston Chronicle | Interview with Ruth López Turley (Ph.D. '01): As the director of Rice University's Houston Education Research Consortium, Ruth López Turley seeks to close socioeconomic gaps in achievement in the Houston Independent School District...The Laredo native and Harvard-educated professor works to strengthen the connection between education research and practice, and founded a network of research institutions and public school districts that have partnered in 13 cities nationwide. Continue reading

Impact and Nonimpact of Online Competition

Impact and Nonimpact of Online Competition

October 25, 2016

Inside Higher Ed | New NBER working paper by faculty member David J. Deming (Harvard Graduate School of Education), Michael Lovenheim (Cornell), and Richard W. Patterson (US Military Academy) finds that growth of fully online degree programs led to increased spending and falling enrollments at some place-based colleges, but had little impact on tuition rates.
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Latest commentary and analysis

Residential Mobility by Whites Maintains Segregation Despite Recent Changes

Residential Mobility by Whites Maintains Segregation Despite Recent Changes

December 21, 2016

NYU Furman Center | By Jackelyn Hwang (Ph.D. '15), essay for the NYU Furman Center discussion series "The Dream Revisited." Hwang is postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University, and in fall 2017 will join the Stanford University faculty as Assistant Professor of Sociology.

Tomás Jiménez: Immigration, the American Identity, and the Election

Tomás Jiménez: Immigration, the American Identity, and the Election

December 16, 2016

Peninsula TV—The Game |  Tomás Jiménez (Ph.D. '05), Stanford Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the program Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, joins to talk about our history, where we are now, and where we might be going. Jiménez's newest book, due out in 2017, is The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life (University of California Press).

How Does Parental Satisfaction Vary across School Sectors?

How Does Parental Satisfaction Vary across School Sectors?

December 14, 2016

EdNext Podcast | Paul E. Peterson and Marty West discuss the findings of two polls on parental opinion. Paul Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard. Martin West (Ph.D. '06) is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Eduation and editor-in-chief of Education Next.

What Do Parents Think of Their Children’s Schools?

What Do Parents Think of Their Children’s Schools?

December 13, 2016

Education Next |  By Samuel Barrows, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West. EdNext poll compares charter, district, and private schools nationwide. 

Samuel Barrows (Ph.D. '14) isi a postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at the Harvard Kennedy School. Paul E. Peterson is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of PEPG. Martin R. West (Ph.D '06), editor-in-chief of Education Next, is associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and deputy director of PEPG.

Trump’s Education Pick: A Win for Public-School Parents

Trump’s Education Pick: A Win for Public-School Parents

December 12, 2016

Wall Street Journal | By Paul E. Peterson, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governnance at Harvard. Differences in satisfaction levels between parents with children in public schools versus private and charter schools—revealed in Education Next's 2016 national survey—suggest that school choice might be the answer for parents who want more for their kids, Peterson argues.

Want to Feel Less Time-Stressed? Here’s one surprisingly effective solution: Give some time away.

Want to Feel Less Time-Stressed? Here’s one surprisingly effective solution: Give some time away.

December 11, 2016

Wall Street Journal | By Cassie Mogilner Holmes (UCLA) and Michael I. Norton (HBS). "Our results show that spending time on others increases feelings of time affluence by increasing self-efficacy, or that (rare) feeling of being able to accomplish all that we set out to do."

Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and a member of Harvard’s Behavioral Insights Group.

Why Are Fewer Adults Surpassing Their Parents’ Incomes?

Why Are Fewer Adults Surpassing Their Parents’ Incomes?

December 9, 2016

FREOPP | By Scott Winship (Ph.D. '09), Visiting Fellow, Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Winship digs into new Chetty et. al. paper released yesterday, "The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940."

The everyday response to racism

The everyday response to racism

December 9, 2016

Harvard Gazette | Sociologist Michèle Lamont and colleagues examined how minority group identities help sculpt how they handle discrimination. Lamont and Graziella Moraes Silva (Ph.D. '10), two of the authors of a new book Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel, sat down for for a question-and-answer session to talk about the project and what its findings say about race relations in the United States.

Lamont is Professor of Sociology and African and African American studies, Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies. Silva is now Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at The Graduate Institute in Geneva.

Is the American Dream Fading?

Is the American Dream Fading?

December 9, 2016

Pacific Standard | A conversation with Robert Manduca (Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy), one of the authors of the economic mobility study making waves this week. Learn more about Robert Manduca's work: robertmanduca.com

A Guide to Solving Social Problems with Machine Learning

A Guide to Solving Social Problems with Machine Learning

December 8, 2016

Harvard Business Review | By Jon Kleinberg (Cornell), Jens Ludwig (University of Chicago), and Sendhil Mullainathan (Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University). "[As] with all new 'products', there is potential for misuse. How can we maximize the benefits while minimizing the harm?"

"In applying these tools the last few years, we have focused on exactly this question. We have learned that some of the most important challenges fall within the cracks between the discipline that builds algorithms (computer science) and the disciplines that typically work on solving policy problems (such as economics and statistics). As a result, few of these key challenges are even on anyone’s radar screen. The good news is that many of these challenges, once recognized, are fairly straightforward to solve."

A Simple Way to Measure Health Care Outcomes

A Simple Way to Measure Health Care Outcomes

December 8, 2016

Harvard Business Review | By John Schupbach (HBS), Amitabh Chandra (HKS), and Robert S. Huckman (HBS). Chandra is Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Memo: Federal school finance policy

Memo: Federal school finance policy

December 8, 2016

Brookings Institution | By Martin West and Nora Gordon. In the first in a Brookings series of memos on federal education policy, Martin West (Ph.D. '06), Associate Professor of Education at Harvard, and Nora Gordon (Ph.D. '02), Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetwon University, tackle school finance.

Robots aren't coming for your job. They're already here

Robots aren't coming for your job. They're already here

December 7, 2016

Bloomberg Game Plan Podcast | This week, Sam and Rebecca of Bloomberg talk about how robots are changing the workplace and what it means for the future of the job market. Will jobs even exist in the future? Well, yes -- they'll just be different. Prof. David Deming (Ph.D. '10), a researcher at Harvard, joins them to talk about what kinds of skills and labor the robots can't take. Hint: Be human.

Who Read What in 2016

Who Read What in 2016

December 7, 2016

Wall Street Journal | What Matthew Desmond and 49 others named as their favorite book this year. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and the author of Evicted.

Latest policy, research briefs, and expert testimony

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