The Wall Street Journal | Discusses new research brief by Richard Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics, which argues that "increased inequality among employers is the main pathway for the trend rise in inequality" in recent decades. Read the brief, published by Third Way. View the research (joint with Erling Barth, Alex Bryson, and James C. Davis), published earlier this year in the Journal of Labor Economics.

Washington Post | Examines new research by David Cutler (Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard), Wei Huang (Ph.D. '16, Postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research), and Adriana Lleras-Muney (UCLA) on the relationship between economic conditions and mortality.  Reporter Jeff Guo draws out its potential implications: "All of this research should have us thinking about inequality. If growth is not wholly good, we should pay attention to who secures its blessings and who suffers the health consequences. In the United States, the financial rewards of economic expansion have mostly accrued to those at the very top, while average Americans have faced decades of stagnant wages. The question is: Have the health consequences accrued to the bottom?"
View the research

The Boston Globe | Coverage of new project of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research on "Race and Cumulative Adversity." The project is led by William Julius Wilson, Harvard's Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, with colleagues Lawrence D. Bobo, Matthew Desmond, Devah Pager, Robert Sampson, Mario Small, and Bruce Western.

Wall Street Journal | Cites David Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who "estimates that the hollowing out of work spread to programmers, librarians and engineers between 2000 and 2012." The article notes that "for a long time, those with bachelor’s degrees in science seemed to be safe from automation-related layoffs because their cognitive knowledge was tough for computers to duplicate." But Deming's research has shown that the labor market increasingly rewards social skills, with employment and job growth particularly strong for jobs requiring high levels of both cognitive and social skills.
View the research (Aug 2016)

Harvard Gazette | Features research by Robert J. Sampson,  Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, and Alix Winter, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy. Their research, "The Racial Ecology of Lead Poisoning: Toxic Inequality in Chicago Neighborhoods," appears in the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race.
View the research

Kirkus Reviews | Interview with Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted, who talks about the people he interviewed and how they shared their lives with him.

Research by Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows Jackelyn Hwang (Ph.D. '15), Michael Hankinson, and Steven Brown is part of an amicus curiae brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a robust enforcement of the Fair Housing Act to prevent and remedy discrimination in mortgage lending. 

Their research, published in Social Forces, examined the relationship between segregation and subprime lending across the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. They found that residential segregation created “distinct geographic markets that enabled subprime lenders and brokers to leverage the spatial proximity of minorities to disproportionately target minority neighborhoods.” They conclude that "segregation played a pivotal role in the housing crisis by creating relatively larger areas of concentrated minorities into which subprime loans could be efficiently and effectively channeled."

Learn more about their work:

Jackelyn Hwang (Ph.D. '15) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University. In fall 2017, she joins the faculty at Stanford University as Assistant Professor of Sociology.

Michael Hankinson is a Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy.

Steven Brown is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and an affiliated scholar in the Executive Office at the Urban Institute. He is also a contributor to the Inequality and Mobility Initiative at the Urban Institute.... Read more about Ph.D. fellow research cited in amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Fair Housing Act

Bloomberg News | Discusses new NBER working paper by economists Amanda Pallais, Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy and Social Studies, and Alexandre Mas of Princeton, which used a field study to examine how workers value alternative work arrangements. 
View the research

Harvard Gazette | Hutchins Center honors 8 medalists who have made a difference. "Introducing television writer and producer[David] Simon, William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, related how, after hearing people discuss Simon’s groundbreaking HBO series “The Wire,” he binge-watched the entire first season on a flight to Bangkok. He then designed a course around the show, aware of how with fiction an artist can portray a deeper truth. “David Simon offers us an unflinching portrait of race, class, and poverty in the United States,” he said.

CNBC | William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard, joins Glenn Hutchins on CNBC to discuss "Multidimensional Inequality in the 21st Century: the Project on Race and Cumulative Adversity," a new research project that Wilson will lead. The project is supported by a grant from the Hutchins Family Foundation, announced today by Harvard's Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies.

Wall Street Journal | Harvard's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research announced  the gift, which is aimed at study of residents in poor neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area. "Leading the new research project, which Mr. Hutchins referred to as the crown jewel of the center, is Prof. William Julius Wilson, who has spent most of his career studying poverty in inner cities." Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard.

American Sociological Association | Profile of Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, by Ann Swidler of the University of California, Berkeley. Featuring perspectives from many colleagues and current and former students, including Mario Luis Small (Ph.D. '01) Grafstein Family Professor of Sociology at Harvard:

"Mario Small of Harvard, who was at Chicago when he, Michèle, and David Harding [(Ph.D. '10) of UC Berkeley], co-edited the important volume, Reconsidering Culture and Poverty, said “In public and in private, Michèle is a force of nature. Pursuing multiple research agendas—on symbolic boundaries, on criteria of evaluation, on culture and behavior, on successful societies, and more—with an extraordinary level of intellectual commitment, Michèle has become a role model for many. Her first major paper was an imaginative study of Jacques Derrida, titled ‘How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher.’ Today, several generations of researchers would be inspired by what would surely be a fascinating sequel: ‘How to Become Michèle Lamont.’”

New York Magazine—The Science of Us | Delves into new study in the American Sociological Review by Matthew Desmond of Harvard, Andrew V. Papachristos of Yale, and David S. Kirk of Oxford.
View the research... Read more about What Happens When Black People Learn They Should Fear the Police

The Hamilton Project | New policy brief  by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and colleagues draws from research by Harvard faculty member David Deming, "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market." Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor of Education and Economics at Harvard Graduate School of Education, first presented this work in the Inequality & Social Policy Seminar Series in fall 2015.
View the latest version of Deming's paper (Aug 2016).... Read more about Seven Facts on Noncognitive Skills from Education to the Labor Market

Washington Post | Cites recent study by Professors Joshua Goodman (Harvard Kennedy School), Julia Melkers (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Amanda Pallais (Harvard Economics), who "found that students who enrolled in Georgia Tech’s $7,000 online master’s degree in computer science would not have gone anywhere else if the program didn’t exist. By 'satisfying large, previously unmet demand for mid-career training, this single program will boost annual production of American computer science master’s degrees by 8 percent,' the Harvard researchers concluded."
View the research

Ars Technica | Examines new study published in the American Sociological Review by Harvard's Matthew Desmond (John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences), Andrew V. Papachristos (Yale University), and David S. Kirk (University of Oxford).

The New York Times | Nicholas Kristof column cites Devah Pager's research on discrimination, a field experiment (joint with Bruce Western and Bart Bonikowski) that documented various forms of racial discrimination at work in a low-wage labor market, and her latest research showing that companies that discriminated were more likely to have gone out of business in the 2008 recession. Pager is Director of the Inequality & Social Policy Program and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard. Western is Professor of Sociology and Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy. Bonikowski is an Associate Professor of Sociology.

The Christian Science Monitor | "The first study of its kind found 911 calls in black Milwaukee neighborhoods dropped significantly following the beating of Frank Jude, an unarmed black man. And then crime rates rose." Examination of new study by Harvard's Matthew Desmond, Andrew Papachristos .(Yale University), and David Kirk (University of Oxford), just out in the American Sociological Review.

The New York Times | New research by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, Andrew V. Papachristos of Yale University, and David S. Kirk at University of Oxford, now out in the American Sociological Review, estimates a net loss of 22,000 calls for service following a highly-publicized case of police violence against an unarmed black man. "Police misconduct," Desmond, Papachristos, and Kirk conclude,"can powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters of personal and public safety."
View the research in ASR 

The Economist | A dearth of competition among firms helps explain wage inequality and a host of other ills, writes The Economist, in its review of various lines of research. Cites work by Harvard's Richard Freeman (joint with Erling Barth, Alex Bryson, and James Davis) and by Raven Malloy (Ph.D. '11) (joint with Christopher Smith and Abigail Wozniak). Malloy is now section chief with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

The Booklist Reader | One in a series of interviews with each of the finalists for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

The New York Times Book Review
Poets, musicians, diplomats, filmmakers, novelists, actors, and artists share the books that accompanied them through 2016. "There was a lot of great nonfiction in 2016," writes novelist Ann Patchett, "but there are four books that I recommend with a sense of urgency"—among them, Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

Former U.S. Representative Barney Frank notes two pieces of conventional wisdom—one domestic; the other international—that have structured our national debates for deades. Subjecting the received wisdom to close examintion: The Globalization Paradox, by Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, 

The New Yorker | Among them, Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

PEN America | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, is one of 10 books on the 2017 PEN America longlist in nonfiction for the John Kenneth Galbraith award. Finalists for this biennial award will be announced on January 18, 2017. The winner will be announced on February 22, 2017 and honored at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on March 27, 2017. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Science at Harvard.

Bloomberg | Angus Deaton, awarded the 2015 Nobel prize in Economics, recommends Matthew Desmond's Evicted, together with $2.00 a Day, by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. 

Boston Globe | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is selected as one of the year's best in nonfiction. Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

The New York Times Book Review | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is among this year's 10 Best Books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

AAPSS | Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, is one of five newly-elected Fellows to join the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2017. The AAPSS, one of the nation's oldest learned societies, recognized Bobo's research contributions as having "quantified, qualified, and illuminated understandings about social inequality, politics, racism and attitudes about race in America."

The 2017 Fellows also include Martha Minow (Dean of Harvard Law School), Margaret Levi (Stanford University), Timothy Smeeding (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Claude Steele (University of California-Berkeley).

The Week (UK) | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is one of 21 recommended books for 2016. Desmond in the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Washington Post | Matthew Desmond's Evicted is selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2016: "In spare and beautiful prose, Desmond chronicles the economic and psychological devastation of substandard housing in America and the cascading misfortunes that come with losing one’s home...In this extraordinary feat of reporting and ethnography, Desmond has made it impossible ever again to consider poverty in the United States without tackling the central role of housing."

Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Harvard Gazette | Renowned political philosopher Danielle Allen, director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, professor of government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and professor of education at the Graduate School of Education, has been named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest faculty honor.

Awardee | Maya Sen, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-authors Avidit Acharya (Stanford) and Matthew Blackwell (Harvard Government Department), have been awarded the Joseph Bernd Award for the best article published in Journal of Politics in 2016. Their article, "The Political Legacy of American Slavery," is available open access.
View article (PDF)

Matthew Desmond's Evicted is one of six books (3 fiction, 3 nonfiction) named to the Shortlist for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The citation reads, "This is essential reading for anyone interested in social justice, poverty, and feminist issues, but its narrative nonfiction style will also draw general readers—and will hopefully spark national discussion."  The two medal winners will be announced January 22, 2017. Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard.

... Read more about Simon Jäger: Upjohn Institute 2016 Dissertation Award

The Boston Globe | Leah Wright Rigueur's book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican (Princeton University Press, 2014), will be honored by the New England Historical Association at its annual conference on October 22. Rigueur, an Assistant Professor af the Harvard Kennedy School, will receive the James P. Hanlan book award, which recognizes the work of an historian, focusing on any area of historical scholarship, who lives and works in New England.

Awardees | Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning announced the recipients of its Certificates of Distinction in teaching for spring 2016, which included Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows Aaron Benavidez (Sociology), Jack Cao (Psychology), Oren Danieli (Business Economics), Kelley Fong (Sociology & Social Policy), Margot Moinester (Sociology), and Alix Winter (Sociology & Social Policy). The recipients will be honored at a reception on Wed, Oct 19th from 4-5:30 pm in CGIS-South.

Washington Post | Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has been selected as one of  six finalists in non-fiction for this year's Kirkus Prizes. Of the 18 finalists in all, three winners will be announced at a special ceremony in Austin on November 3. Desmond, a sociologist, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

... Read more about James Feigenbaum: Economic History Association 2016 Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize

Awardee | Jessica Simes (Ph.D. in Sociology '16), now an assistant professor at Boston University, has been awarded the first of two newly-endowed University Provost Career Development Professorships at that institution.  The three-year University Provost’s Career Development Professorships will support two junior faculty working in academic areas with “the greatest potential for impacting the quality and stature of the University, as determined by the provost." Simes, whose Harvard doctoral dissertation focused on racial inequality and the mass incarceration of African Americans, was recognized for her work in data science—"specifically the mapping of communities to reflect the percentage of incarcerated people—[which] has been the backbone of Simes’s research on race, poverty, and mass incarceration." Learn more about her research at her homepage.

CIFAR | Natalie Bau (Ph.D. in Public Policy, '15) is one of 18 exceptional early-career researchers from diverse science and social science fields selected to the inaugural cohort of the new CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program, sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars receive two-year appointments with one of 14 research programs—in Bau's case, Institutions, Organizations, and Growth.

An Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, Bau studies development and education economics, with an emphasis on the industrial organization of education markets. 

Natalie Bau homepage

Foreign Affairs | By Douglas W. Elmendorf. "The development and passage of the ACHA is a case study in how not to make public policy," writes Elmendorf. Douglas Elmendorf is Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy. He served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis | Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, joined the inaugural conference of the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute, where he spoke in the opening panel on segregation and inequality. Putnam and Harvard economist Lawrence Katz both serve on the Institute's Board of Advisors.

Why Opportunity and Inclusion Matter to America's Economic Strength
Lael Brainard of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors delivered the keynote address, highlighting issues of employment, household financial health, the geography of opportunity, and affordable housing. She also drew attention to insights generated by the Boston Fed's Workng Cities Challenge.
View text of remarks
 

Earlier this spring Governor Brainard delivered the 2017 Malcolm Wiener Lecture in International Political Economy in the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast | Professor David Deming (PhD '10) sits down with PolicyCast host Matt Cadwallader to talk about his new Harvard Kennedy School course, The Causes and Consequences of Inequality (SUP-206). If traditional jobs like manufacturing aren’t coming back, how can the economy adapt? How can the American education system better prepare the next generation for the needs of the modern economy? Deming's research grapples with these questions.

Harvard Gazette | This past fall, Harvard President Drew Faust convened a University-wide task force to examine ways to help Harvard thrive as a place where all members of its increasingly diverse community feel that they truly belong. The task force is co-chaired by James Bryant Conant University Professor Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Harvard Kennedy School Academic Dean Archon Fung, the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship; and Vice President for Campus Services Meredith Weenick.

The task force’s co-chairs recently sat down with the Harvard Gazette to discuss this report, their first year, and what’s next for this important work.

U.S. Congress Joint Economic Commitee | Professors Robert D. Putnam and Mario L. Small (PhD '01), joined by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute and Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, testified before the Joint Economic Committee on the potential role for social capital in addressing U.S. economic and social challenges.

Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, focused on two generational concerns: why social capital matters in narrowing the opportunity gap among today's children, and what a boomer generation "aging alone" portends for U.S. eldercare costs in the years ahead.
Read Robert Putnam testimony

Mario Small, Grafstein Family Professor of Sociology, discussed the evidence that "early education and childcare programs may be an especially effective venue to help low-income parents generate social capital,"..." that this social capital is beneficial, and that there is reason to believe that targeted interventions may help such programs maximize these benefits."
Read Mario Small testimony

Gov Innovator Podcast | Andy Feldman (PhD '07) interviews Carrie Conaway (AM '01), Chief Strategy and Research Officer for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Conaway was recently appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences. Feldman is currently a visiting fellow with the Center for Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

The 74 | Professor David Deming (PhD '10) on the lasting benefits of Head Start, school accountability, and integration. Deming is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The New York Times Magazine
By Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.
 

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Russell Sage Foundation | By Christopher Wimer (Ph.D. '07)

Congressional testimony| Testimony of  Scott Winship (Ph.D. '09) before Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives.

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston | By Alicia Sasser Modestino (Ph.D. '01), Daniel Shoag (Ph.D. '11), and Joshua Ballance

Usable Knowledge (HGSE) | Interview with Ron Ferguson

The Journalist's Resource | Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12)

Global Development Network | By Dan Honig, Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy. Award-winning essay of GDN Next Horizons Essay Competition.

Congressional Testimony | Testimony of Justin Wolfers (Ph.D. '01) before Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs

Scholars Strategy Network | By Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Matthew M. Chingos and Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Scholars Strategy Network | By Theda Skocpol

Poverty and Race Research Action Council | By Eva Rosen (Ph.D. '14)

Brookings Institution—The Brown Center Chalkboard | By Martin R. West (Faculty, Ph.D. '06)

Journalist's Resource | William Julius Wilson, Robert Sampson

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs

Boston University Initiative on Cities | By Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12) and David M. Glick

Scholars Strategy Network | by Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09)

Scholars Strategy Network | By Jackelyn Hwang, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy.

Journalist's Resource | Joshua Goodman