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Latest Inequality & Social Policy In the News

Lowering healthcare spending by tackling non-medical issues

Lowering healthcare spending by tackling non-medical issues

January 8, 2016

Marketplace | Amitabh Chandra, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, comments on a federal experiment to improve care and lower healthcare spending by focusing on social problems like homelessness and domestic violence. Chandra suggests that money could be better spent by increasing funding for community health centers and hospitals that serve low-income communities—interventions, he says, that we know improve health and are cost-effective.

Trump Supporters Appear to be Misinformed, Not Uninformed

Trump Supporters Appear to be Misinformed, Not Uninformed

January 7, 2016

FiveThirtyEight | Analysis of why Donald Trump's support has proved to be so durable draws on findings of Jennifer Hochschild (Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government) and Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12, now Boston University) showing that there are incentives for politicians to keep citizens both misinformed and politically active.

The Most Anticipated Books of 2016

The Most Anticipated Books of 2016

January 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor in the Social Sciences, is named one of the most anticipated books of 2016: "This stunning, remarkable book—a scholar’s 21st-century How the Other Half Lives—demands a wide audience."

William Julius Wilson, Scholar of Race and Class, Looks Ahead

William Julius Wilson, Scholar of Race and Class, Looks Ahead

December 28, 2015

Associated Press | William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, spoke with The Associated Press about his decades of thinking and writing about race, class, education, and poverty and about how his ideas echo through today’s news stories, whether on income inequality or the Black Lives Matter movement.

Wilson is now embarking on a new project with colleagues at Harvard, "Multidimensional Inequality in the 21st Century: The Project on Race and Cumulative Adversity." The project will examine the intersection of race and poverty in the United States across domains ranging from labor markets to criminal justice. This article appeared in dozens of news outlets including The New York TimesWashington Post, and ABC News.

The Rise of Urban Public Boarding Schools

The Rise of Urban Public Boarding Schools

December 26, 2015

The Atlantic | Cites research by Roland Fryer, Henry Lee Professor of Economics: "The Potential of Urban Boarding Schools for the Poor: Evidence from Seed."

Oregon company makes a point of hiring ex-convicts

Oregon company makes a point of hiring ex-convicts

December 25, 2015

Marketplace | Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, discusses her current research, which examines the job performance of those with criminal records in the military. Pager finds that "those with serious criminal pasts perform just as well if not better than their counterparts with no criminal records."

A New Investment Opportunity: Helping Ex-Convicts

A New Investment Opportunity: Helping Ex-Convicts

December 21, 2015

The Atlantic | Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy, explains how Pay for Success programs can provide real-time data to learn more rapidly what works in connecting those leaving prison with jobs and reducing recidivism.

Human Science

Human Science

December 14, 2015

Inside Higher Ed | Michèle Lamont discusses her new article, co-authored with Veronica Boix Mansilla (HGSE) and Kyoko Sato (Stanford), which explores the determinants of successful interdisciplinary collaboration in the social, natural, and computational sciences: "One takeaway from our paper is that we must pay heed to the way interactions and emotions shape the production of knowledge -- rather than limiting our perspective by focusing solely on the cognitive when we measure success.”

The American Middle Class Meltdown

The American Middle Class Meltdown

December 14, 2015

NPR's On Point | Elisabeth Jacobs (Ph.D. '08, now Washington Center for Equitable Growth) guests, along with Rakesh Kochhar (Pew Research Center), Tyler Cowen (George Mason), and Jacob Hacker (Yale University).

Latest commentary and analysis

Jeremy Levine

In many poor urban neighborhoods, nonprofits are superseding elected politicians as neighborhood representatives

November 7, 2016

LSE US Centre | By Jeremy R. Levine (Ph.D. '16), Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan. The past five decades have seen community based nonprofit organizations become an integral component of urban policy, a trend which has been accelerated by the growth of public-private partnerships. In new research using fieldwork in Boston, Massachusetts, Jeremy Levine finds that in some poor urban communities, nonprofits are actually taking the place of elected officials as legitimate community representatives. While this move towards private political representation means that urban policymakers need to reconsider how neighborhoods are represented and gain access to resources, they also raise questions of accountability.
View the research (American Sociological Review).

U.S. Election Coverage: Leah Wright Rigueur

U.S. Election Coverage: Leah Wright Rigueur

November 6, 2016

Al Jazeera TV | Tune in November 6-9 as Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, joins Al Jazeera TV's U.S. elections coverage team as they broadcast live from AJTV studios.

Sentencing Reform in an Era of Racialized Mass Incarceration

Sentencing Reform in an Era of Racialized Mass Incarceration

November 3, 2016

Doctoral fellow Alix Winter, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, and Matthew Clair, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, respond to the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission's invitation to comment on issues relating to sentencing policies and practices for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Winter and Clair provide "a brief overview of sociological research on mass incarceration, sentencing practices, and racial/ethnic minorities’ disproportionate contact with criminal justice institutions," drawing the Commission's attention to "empirical research pertaining to potential sentencing practices, policies, and principles that may assist the Commonwealth in reducing racial/ethnic sentencing disparities". They then draw on this research to make specific recommendations.

Clair and Winter co-authored a related academic article, “How Judges Think about Racial Disparities: Situational Decision-Making in the Criminal Justice System," published in Criminology earlier this year. Learn more about their work at their homepages:
scholar.harvard.edu/alixwinter
scholar.harvard.edu/matthewclair

An Interview with Matthew Desmond: The Author of 'Evicted' reveals why the housing crisis is one of the most pressing problems facing our nation.

An Interview with Matthew Desmond: The Author of 'Evicted' reveals why the housing crisis is one of the most pressing problems facing our nation.

November 2, 2016

Read it Forward | Interview with Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences: "It's heartbreaking. I mean, when you watch a mother decide between buying food for her family or paying the rent, or, after a loved one dies, debating between paying for the funeral or paying the rent, you’re seeing people confront really terrible choices. Poverty is not pretty. Poverty is a very ugly thing."

"We're at a point right now where half of poor renters below the poverty line are spending over 50% of their income on housing and at least one in four is spending 70% of their income on housing. We can’t do anything about inequality if we don’t address that problem....A lot of times when we hear policy and prescriptions about how to ameliorate poverty in the U.S., they are talking about jobs. Good jobs, better jobs, great. But it’s half the solution. We have to address this other thing too."

Can US Elections Be Rigged?

Can US Elections Be Rigged?

November 2, 2016

Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast | Alex Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy, offers an historical perspective to modern worries about rigged elections and weighs the prevention of voter fraud against the risk of voter suppression.

Michele Lamont

Interview with Michèle Lamont: Video

November 2, 2016

COES—Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social | Interview with Michèle Lamont, a keynote speaker at the 2016 COES-LSE annual Inequalities conference, held at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, November 2-4, 2016. Lamont is Harvard's Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. (Interview is in English with Spanish subtitles).

Episode 10: Breaking Down Gentrification with Jackelyn Hwang

Episode 10: Breaking Down Gentrification with Jackelyn Hwang

November 2, 2016

Grapple  | Jackelyn Hwang (Ph.D. '15) joins to discuss the causes of gentrification, the way in which race factors into the way that gentrification happens, and what happens to renters and homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. Hwang is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University, and will join Stanford University's faculty as Assistant Professor of Sociology in fall 2017. [Audio + Interview highlights (text)]

Voter Discrimination Starts Well Before Election Day

Voter Discrimination Starts Well Before Election Day

November 1, 2016

Boston Review | By Ariel R. White (Ph.D. '16), Assistant Professor of Political Science, MIT. "Even if voter ID laws don’t dramatically affect minority turnout, we should be concerned about them. They levy a sort of tax on minority voters, who have to work harder to get information from local officials, jump through bureaucratic hoops to get ID they may not otherwise have, and face disproportionate scrutiny from pollworkers," writes White.

Solutions to Income Volatility: A Discussion with Elisabeth Jacobs

Solutions to Income Volatility: A Discussion with Elisabeth Jacobs

November 1, 2016

The Aspen Institute | Discussion with Elisabeth Jacobs (Ph.D. '08), Senior Director for Policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her research focuses on economic inequality and mobility, family economic security, poverty, social insurance, and the politics of inequality. Here, she shares insights on how best to help families struggling with income volatility. 

Why the establishment was blindsided by Donald Trump

Why the establishment was blindsided by Donald Trump

October 28, 2016

Washington Post | By Danielle Allen, Professor of Government and Education. He has revealed the U.S. to be one nation living in two very different worlds, argues Allen, a political theorist and contributing columnist for the Post.

Paying for Outcomes: Beyond the Social Impact Bond Buzz

Paying for Outcomes: Beyond the Social Impact Bond Buzz

October 28, 2016

Inside Story (Australia) | By Matt Tyler (MPP '17) and Ben Stephens (MPP '17). Social impact bonds’ most valuable contribution could be to support the expansion of pay-for-success contracting to dramatically improve the lives of vulnerable Australians, write Tyler and Stephens.