The Atlantic | By Patrick Sharkey (Ph.D. '07), New York University. Less visible than the rise of economic inequality is the way it has altered America's urban neighborhoods. Two books—Evicted by Harvard's Matthew Desmond and Ghetto by Mitchell Duneier (Princeton)—should help change that, writes Sharkey.

Wall Street Journal | With insights from Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics. Article includes interactive data visualization showing pay gaps by occupation.

Washington Post | Article featuring Anthony Abraham Jack, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, and his dissertation research on the experience of low-income students at elite colleges and universities.

Vox | Quotes Brendan Saloner (Ph.D. '12), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Quartz | Michael Luca, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, talks about new study with HBS colleagues Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin, which finds that Republican-controlled legislatures tend to loosen gun laws after mass shootings.

National Public Radio | Q & A  with Professor Ron Ferguson of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, author of  a new report, Aiming Higher Together: Strategizing Better Educational Outcomes for Boys and Young Men of Color. Ferguson identifies the biggest challenges to conventional wisdom revealed in the this study and insights that educators can bring to the classroom.

Washington Post | Delves into research by Ann Owens (Ph.D. '12) of University of Southern California showing that growing income segregation since 1990 has been driven almost entirely by what's happening among families with children. Given considerable research showing the advantage of neighborhood context on children's outcomes, this has implications for widening gaps in future outcomes. View the study in the American Sociological Review.

The New York Times | Eduardo Porter Economic Scene column quotes Lawrence F. Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics.

Seattle Times | Article featuring Jal Mehta (Ph.D. '06), Associate Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, who explains what it means to be in search of deeper learning and why it has become more urgent in today's economy.

Commonweal | Frank Pasquale reviews Matthew Desmond's Evicted: "One cannot read Evicted and conclude that a few technocratic tweaks, embedded in some meliorist plan for improving the housing market, will suitably address the growing crisis of unstable and inadequate housing."

Harvard Kennedy School | David T. Ellwood, Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy, has been named director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Douglas Elmendorf announced today. Ellwood begins his appointment on July 1. Ellwood, who first joined the Harvard faculty in 1980, served as the eighth dean of Harvard Kennedy School from July 2004 through June 2015.

The New York Times | Quotes Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences. Also David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, who spoke about health disparities by race in the Inequality & Social Seminar Series, February 8, 2016.

Salon | Salon talks with Michael Javen Fortner (Ph.D. '10), Assistant Professor of Political Science at CUNY and the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Harvard University Press 2015), about race, the Clintons, and the 1994 crime bill.

E-International Relations | Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, sits down for a discussion of what she sees as the most exciting research and debates she sees happening in her field, and what has prompted the most significant shifts in her thinking.

Bloomberg.com | Discusses new research by Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, which uses the U.S. military — the nation's largest employer — as a natural experiment to evaluate the work performance of those with felony records upon re-entering the job market.

Talking Points Memo | Features research by James Feigenbaum (Ph.D. candidate in Economics) and Christopher Muller (Ph.D. '14, now an assistant professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley) linking lead exposure and violent crime in the early 20th century. Feigenbaum and Muller presented this work, which is forthcoming in Explorations in Economic History, in the Inequality Seminar on April 18. Read the Feigenbaum and Muller paper.

Los Angeles Times | Research by Ann Owens (Ph.D. '12), Assistant Professor of Sociology at USC, is featured. View the study, forthcoming in the American Sociological Review.

Vox | Features research by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy, and Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government & Social Policy, from their paper "Billionaires against Big Business: Growing Tensions in the Republican Party Coalition." 

Also cites Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson (Ph.D. '15, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution), The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.

New York Magazine: Science of Us | Explores new study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, by Katherine DeCelles (University of Toronto) and Michael I. Norton (Harvard Business School). Norton, a social psychologist, is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration and a member of Harvard’s Behavioral Insights Group.
View the research 

NPR Weekend Edition | Nora Gordon (Ph.D. '02), Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, explains how Title I, an anti-poverty program, privileges wealthy, high-spending states. The article notes that Gordon "has spent her career studying Title I and its effects on schools and has just released a few big ideas to improve it."

Education Week | Inequality & Social Policy faculty and alumni are well-represented on this year's Education Week list of 200 most influential education scholars, university-based scholars "who are doing the most to influence education policy and practice." Of special note, alumni hold four of the top five spots on the junior faculty list, including Martin West, David Deming, and Jal Mehta (Harvard), and Judith Scott-Clayton (Columbia TC).

Awardee | Watch as Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, receives the American Economic Association's  John Bates Clark Medal. In his remarks, Fryer reflects on "the true owners who have paved the way for all of us who use the tools of economics not just to calculate the odds for poor people, but to change the odds." [begins at 15:45 mark]

William T. Grant Foundation | Faculty member Matthew Desmond is one of ten finalists for the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars program, which supports early career researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Four to six Scholars will be selected in March 2016 for these five-year research awards.

Awardee| Deirdre Bloome (Ph.D. '14, now University of Michigan) is one of seven New Scholar grant recipients selected by Stanford's Center on Poverty and Inequality. Bloome will investigate (1) to what extent intragenerational and intergenerational income mobility contribute to lifetime income inequality, (2) how these contributions have changed across recent birth cohorts, and (3) whether these differ across people from low- and high-income backgrounds—with an eye to understanding "how income mobility over the life course relates to income inequality between people."

Congratulations to Anthony Abraham Jack (Ph.D. candidate in Sociology), who has been selected to join the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow in the 2016-19 cohort. The Harvard  Society of Fellows recognizes the ‘highest caliber of intellectual achievement’ from any field of study, awarding three-year postdoctoral fellowships to twelve new Junior Fellows each year. Learn more about Anthony Jack at his homepage▶

Event [video] | Claudia Goldin delivered the eighth annual Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture at Columbia University on "Career and Family: Collision or Confluence?" Christopher Flinn (NYU) and Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia) served as discussants. See the video ▶

Awardee | Ariel R. White (Ph.D. candidate in Government) has been selected one of eight Harvard Horizons Scholars for 2016—"PhD students whose ideas, innovations, and insights have the potential to reshape their disciplines." Ariel will present her research, Voter Behavior in the Shadow of Punitive Policies, at a university-wide symposium to be held in Sanders Theater on April 5, 2016. Read more about her work ►

The Economist | Robert Putnam's, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, described as "thoughtful and persuasive", has been selected by The Economist as one of the best books of 2015.  Also making the list, Inequality: What Can Be Done?, by Anthony Atkinson (University of Oxford).

Awardees | Stefanie Stantcheva and Alberto Alesina (Harvard Economics) are the recipients of a Russell Sage Foundation grant to examine how perceptions of social mobility affect support for different types of redistributive policies.

Awardee Brendan Saloner (Ph.D '12)

American Academy of Arts & Sciences [video] | Roland Fryer, a newly-elected member in the 235th class of Fellows,  addressed the group as the Class III speaker, representing the social sciences at the American Academy's 2015 Induction Ceremony.  View his address (15 minutes).

Awardee | Robert D. Putnam to receive the Institute for Advanced Studies' (University of Bologna) highest honor for scientific excellence and international acclaim.

Awardee | Michael Hankinson, Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy.... Read more about Michael Hankinson awarded TESS and JCHS grants to investigate political behavior and the housing affordability crisis

Awardee | Matthew Desmond. View MacArthur Fellow profile ▶

Harvard Gazette | Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences. Learn more about his work: 
MacArthur Fellow profile ▶

Awardee | Dan Zuberi (Ph.D. '04) has been named to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) College, which represents "the emerging generation of scholarly, scientific and artistic leadership in Canada." Zuberi, now RBC chair and Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Toronto's School of Public Policy and Governance, was recognized for his "innovative social policy research" on vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in Canada and the U.S.  (Read the full citation)

Awardee | Viridiana Rios (Ph.D. '13) will be a visiting fellow this fall at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where she will be working on a project titled, "Economic Policy for Crime Deterrence in Mexico."

Social and Behavioral Sciences Team | Daniel Hopkins (Ph.D. '07)... Read more about Daniel Hopkins serves as fellow with White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team

Awardee | Michèle Lamont. Canada's highest honor a scholar can achieve in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences.

Politico Magazine | Robert Putnam recognized as one of fifty "thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics in 2015."

NPR Weekend Edition | Leah Wright Rigueur of the Harvard Kennedy School joins to discuss the significance of this weekend's Women's March and how it compares to other marches in history.

Washington Post | By Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Moyers & Company | Four historians and political scientists "dissect the big lie Trump rode to power: the Birther lie." Featuring Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Neil Painter (Princeton University); Christopher Lebron (Yale University); and Philip Klinkner (Hamilton College). [Video + transcript]

Teen Vogue | By Vanessa Williamson (Ph.D. '15), Fellow in Governance Studies, Brookings Institution.

ABC News Nightline | Features Leah Wright Rigueur of the Harvard Kennedy School: "If we have a president who's blocking all access and trying to discredit the press, we don't have people who are holding the President's feet to the fire."

Brookings Institution | As politicians debate the merits of increased federal spending on infrastructure, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy asked two prominent economists—Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers and Edward Glaeser—about the economic case for stepped-up infrastructure spending and their thoughts on how to spend any additional money most wisely. Here are the highlights of the conversation. (Read more)

Harvard Graduate School of Education | A Q&A with David Deming (Ph.D. '10), a professor at the HGSE and Harvard Kennedy School.

Among the research highlighted in this interview, a study of the Adams scholarship in Massachusetts, by Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15) and Joshua Goodman, Associate Professor of Public Policy, published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (Oct 2014); and a new paper by Deming and Christopher Walters of UC Berkeley, "The Impacts of Price and Spending Subsidies on U.S. Postsecondary Attainment."

WNYC—The Takeaway | Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, looks at the significance of these monuments on Martin Luther King Jr. Day [Audio: 5-minutes].

The New York Times | By Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Business Review | By Amanda Pallais, Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy and Social Studies. Findings from her research with Dylan Glover (Sciences Po) and William Pariente (Université Catholique de Louvain), forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
View the research

Usable Knowledge (HGSE) | A primer on presidential transitions, Betsy DeVos, and how federal policy trickles down. Interview with Martin West (Ph.D. '06), Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

J-PAL North America | Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allen Professor of Economics, and Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, were among the speakers and panelists for the J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative Year 1 Convening. Katz serves as Scientific Director for J-PAL North America, along with MIT economist Amy Finkelstein.
View agenda

Washington Post | By Danielle Allen,James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

HKS PolicyCast | Policy roundtable with Douglas Elmendorf, Brigitte Madrian, and David Ellwood. Second in a three-part series with Harvard Kennedy School experts on the challenges facing President-elect Trump. Look for an edited version of their discussion to appear in the winter issue of the Harvard Kennedy School Magazine.

Douglas Elmendorf, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, led the Congressional Budget Office for six years before becoming Dean in 2016. Brigitte Madrian is a behavioral economist whose work focuses on household savings and investment behavior. David Ellwood is a leading expert on poverty and welfare in the United States. He served as Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School from 2004-2015, and is now focused on issues of inequality and mobility as Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

Brookings Institution | A forum examining questions of public investment—in both physical infrastructure and human capital—opened with keynote remarks by Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University, and discussion from Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics. (Summers provides a summary of his key points from the presentation and discussion on his blog).

Subsequent speakers turned to human capital investment, including Richard Murnane, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Research Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Video, transcripts, and presentation materials from the day's events are available on the Brookings website.

Financial Times | By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University. This column also ran in the Washington Post.

IRP Poverty Research & Policy Podcast | IRP National Poverty Fellow Nicole Deterding (Ph.D. '15) talks about research she and colleague David Pedulla of Stanford University conducted that examined employers' responses to degrees from for-profit versus non-profit two-year colleges in the early phases of the hiring process [audio + transcript].

The National Poverty Fellows program is an academic/government partnership between the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Learn more about Nicole Deterding's work:
nicoledeterding.com

C-SPAN | Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy the Harvard Kennedy School, was among the speakers for this plenary session of the 131st annual meeting of the American Historical Association, held January 5-8 in Denver. The panel also featured Nathan Citino (Rice University), Margaret O'Mara (University of Washington), Kenneth Pomeranz (University of Chicago), and Sean Wilentz (Princeton University). 

History News Network | Video interview with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, conducted at the 2017 convention of the American Historical Association. Muhammad spoke earlier in the evening at a plenary session on "The First Hundred Days: Priorities for a New US President." The session, recorded by C-SPAN, will be available within a few weeks.

NPR On Point with Tom Ashbrook | With Alicia Sasser Modestino (Ph.D. '01), Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics, Northeastern University, and Associate Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

An open letter signed by nearly 200 professional political scientists and scholars of political behavior, including Harvard professor Ryan Enos and Inequality & Social Policy alumni Bernard Fraga PhD'13 (Indiana University), Alex Hertel-Fernandez PhD'16 (Columbia University), Jeremy Levine PhD'16 (University of Michigan), Daniel Schlozman PhD'11 (Johns Hopkins University), Ariel White PhD'16 (MIT), and Vanessa Williamson PhD'15 (Brookings Institution).

EconoFact | By Tara Watson (Ph.D. '03), Associate Professor of Economics, Williams College. Watson recently served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis, U.S. Dept of Treasury (2015-2016).

EconoFact | By David Deming (Ph.D '10), Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Harvard Business Review | By Amanda Pallais, Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy and Social Studies. Findings from her research with Dylan Glover (Sciences Po) and William Pariente (Université Catholique de Louvain), forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
View the research

PNAS | By Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences. A special feature perspective, available early access in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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.

Reducing inequality, reforming the health care system, investing in higher education, strengthening the financial system, and addressing climate change are the focus of this year's Economic Report of the President.

Draws on research by Inequality & Social Policy affiliates Amitabh Chandra, Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15), David Deming (Ph.D. '10 and faculty), Will Dobbie (Ph.D. '13), Roland Fryer, Claudia Goldin, Joshua Goodman, Nathaniel Hendren, Thomas Kane, Lawrence Katz, Adam Looney (Ph.D. '04), Brigitte Madrian, Sendhil Mullainathan, Jonah Rockoff (Ph.D. '04), and Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09).

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, and Jimmy Narang.

A summary of the authors' findings from a newly-released paper by a team of researchers from Stanford, Harvard, and UC Berkeley. Harvard Inequality & Social Policy affiliates are Nathaniel Hendren, Assistant Professor of Economics, and Robert Manduca, Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy. Learn more: The Equality of Opportunity Project ▶

Brookings Institution | By Douglas N. Harris, Helen F. Ladd, Marshall S. Smith, and Martin R. West. A set of principles to guide the federal role in education policy from a bipartisan group of scholars and policy experts. Martin West (Ph.D. '06) is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Harvard Kennedy School | Discusses findings of new study forthcoming in the December issue of The Review of Economics and Statistics by David J. Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor of Education and Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15), Assistant Professor of Education an Public Policy, Teachers College, Columbia University; Jennifer Jennings of New York University; and Christopher Jencks, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School.... Read more about High-Stakes Student Testing has Mixed Results in Texas Schools

American Sociological Association | Discusses findings of recent study by Alexandra Killewald, Professor of Sociology, published in the August issue of the American Sociological Review.
View the research (ungated).... Read more about Study Finds Couples' Division of Paid and Unpaid Labor Linked to Risk of Divorce

Harvard University Press | Ellora Derenoncourt, Ph.D. candidate in Economics, is a contributor to After Piketty, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in April 2017. Edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum, the 640-page volume brings together published reviews by Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Robert Solow and newly-commissioned essays by Suresh Naidu, Laura Tyson, Michael Spence, Heather Boushey, Branko Milanovic, and others. Emmanuel Saez lays out an agenda for future research on inequality, while a variety of essays examine the book's implications for the social sciences more broadly. Piketty replies in a substantial concluding chapter.

Derenoncourt's chapter explores the historical and institutional origins of the wealth and income inequality documented in Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. Drawing on the framework introduced by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson of extractive and inclusive institutions, Derenoncourt demonstrates how these institutions influence the distribution of economic outcomes in different countries and regions historically. In particular, she explores these questions in the context of slavery in the US South and European colonization in Africa and the Americas.

Learn more about her work:
Ellora Derenoncourt: Ph.D. fellow page ▶... Read more about After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality

American Economics Association | Is tax flight by the rich mostly a myth or a serious concern? Discusses new study co-authored by Stefanie Stantcheva, Assistant Professor of Economics, which appears in the October issue of the American Economic Review. The research is co-authored by Ufuk Akcigit, University of Chicago, and Salomé Baslandze, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance. 
View AER article (complimentary access)

American Economics Association | Delves into new article by Harvard's Amitabh Chandra (Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy), Amy Finkelstein (MIT), Adam Sacarny (Columbia University), and Chad Syverson (Chicago Booth).

"A study published in the August issue of American Economic Review found that hospitals – long thought to be economic islands apart from typical market pressures – are shaped by consumer-driven forces like in other industries. The findings challenge long-held beliefs about health care “exceptionalism” and raise questions for policymakers as they consider reforms to the $3 trillion U.S. health care sector."
View the AER article (complimentary access)

National Academy of Sciences—Issues in Science and Technology | By Alicia Sasser Modestino (Ph.D. '01). Middle-skill jobs are key for the nation and its workforce. Here is where things stand today and projections for future improvements. 

Alicia Sasser Modestino is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics at Northeastern University, and Associate Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

Brookings Institution | Latest Social Mobility Memo by Richard V. Reeves and Dana Bowen Matthew of the Brookings Institution features findings of new study by Judith-Scott Clayton (Ph.D. '09), Associate Professor of Education and Economics, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Jing-Li, also of Columbia University, revealing large black-white disparities in student loan debt, which more than triples after graduation.

Brookings Institution | Delves into research by Inequality fellow Alex Bell (Ph.D. candidate in Economics), Raj Chetty (Stanford University), Xavier Jaravel (now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford), and John Van Reenen (LSE and MIT) showing that "children of low-income parents are much less likely to become inventors than their higher-income counterparts (as are minorities and women)." Their research explores the sources of differences, and "establishes the importance of 'innovation exposure effects' during childhood," both geographic and parental.
View the research

Brookings Institution | By Judith Scott Clayton (Ph.D. '09), Associate Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Jing Li, Research Associate, Teachers College: "While previous work has documented racial disparities in student borrowing, delinquencies, and defaults, in this report we provide new evidence that racial gaps in total debt are far larger than even recent reports have recognized, far larger now than in the past, and correlated with troubling trends in the economy and in the for-profit sector. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications."

Brookings Institution | By Douglas W Elmendorf, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. This brief is part of "Election 2016 and America’s Future." a Brookings-wide initiative in which Brookings scholars have identified the biggest issues facing the country this election season and are providing individual ideas for how to address them. Elmendorf was a visiting fellow with Brookings until he became Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School in January 2016.

Harvard Business Review | Francesca Gino of the Harvard Business School discusses her work with collaborators Todd Rogers and Richard Zeckhauser of the Harvard Kennedy School, Maurice Schweitzer of Wharton, and Mike Norton of Harvard Business School on the use of paltering in negotations.
View the research