New York Magazine—The Science of Us | Discusses the research behind a recent Wall Street Journal column by behavioral researchers Cassie Mogilner Holmes (UCLA) and Michael Norton (Harvard Business School).

The Trace | Cites David Hureau (Ph.D. '16), Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at SUNY Albany and an affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab:

What criminals want is “not significantly different from what the average gun owner interested wants,” according to David Hureau, a criminologist at SUNY-Albany, who has interviewed people seeking guns on the black market. Like the majority of gun owners interviewed in the Harvard/Northeastern survey, Hureau’s research subjects choose to carry guns because “they’re fundamentally engaged in self-protection.”

Slate | Discusses new study by economist Amanda Pallais of Harvard, coauthored with Leonardo Bursztyn  of the University of Chicago and Thomas Fujiwara of Princeton, which "found that single women in an elite MBA program responded to a career survey with lower salary targets and acceptable levels of work travel if they thought their responses might be visible to their classmates.

View the research: "'Acting Wife': Marriage Market Incentives and Labor Market Investments."

Chicago Reader | The odds of winning in eviction court are stacked against tenants; a lack of transparency is part of the problem, writes Maya Dukmasova. Cites Evicted by Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond on the role of evictions as a major contributing factor to entering and remaining entrenched in poverty.

The New York Times | Lawrence Katz quoted. “Over the long haul, clearly automation’s been much more important — it’s not even close,” said  Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change.

Labor economists say there are ways to ease the transition for workers whose jobs have been displaced by robots...Few are policies that Mr. Trump has said he will pursue. “Just allowing the private market to automate without any support is a recipe for blaming immigrants and trade and other things, even when it’s the long-[run] impact of technology,” said Mr. Katz, who was the Labor Department’s chief economist under President Clinton.

New York Magazine—Science of Us | A look at the research on emotions and consumption by psychologist Jennifer S. Lerner, a Professor in the Management, Leadership, and Decision Science Area at the Harvard Kennedy School and Co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory.

Time.com | Interview with behavioral scientist Todd Rogers (HKS), co-author of a new study on "paltering" with Richard Zeckhauser (HKS), Francesca Gino (HBS), and Michael I. Norton (HBS), which appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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The Economist | Cites research by Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag on the dramatic decline in regional income convergence in the U.S. over the past 30 years. Shoag (Ph.D. '11) is Associate Profesor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ganong is a postdoctoral fellow at NBER and (beginning fall 2017) Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
​​​​​​​View the research

Harvard Magazine | Excerpt from David A. Moss's forthcoming book, Democracy: A Case Study, available in January from Harvard University Press:

"[D]emocratic decision-making in the United States has nearly always been rooted in disagreement and tension, including plenty of bare-knuckle politics...The critical question is what makes this conflict either constructive or destructive...In most periods across the nation’s history, it has served as a powerful source of strength. But not always. And this, in a nutshell, is what we need to figure out. Why has fierce political conflict proved highly constructive at many historical moments and severely destructive at others, and which type of conflict…characterizes the nation’s democracy today?"

Moss is the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and founder of The Tobin Project.... Read more about Open Book: Bare-Knuckle Politics

The Ezra Klein Show | Interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who discusses his cover article in the current issue of the Atlantic based on hours of interviews with President Obama about the role race played in Obama’s upbringing, his presidency, and the 2016 campaign. Asked about "a few of the data points" that have influenced his thinking, Coates cites work of Harvard sociologists Robert Sampson on neighborhoods and Devah Pager on discrimination in the labor market.

Harvard Gazette | Harvard sociology course,“Reinventing (and Reimagining) Boston: The Changing American City,” is featured. Taught by Robert Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, and David Luberoff, a lecturer on sociology and Senior Associate Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.

The Atlantic | Cover article by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Jan-Feb 2017 print issue) cites research by Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09) and Patrick Sharkey (Ph.D. '07). Judith Scott-Clayton, now Associate Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, found that "black graduates [hold] nearly $53,000 in student loan debt four years after graduation—almost twice as much as their white counterparts, and that "black college graduates are still substantially more likely to default on their debt within four years of graduation (7.6 percent versus 2.4 percent of white graduates)." Learn more about this research, which Scott-Clayton wrote about for the Brookings Institution "Evidence Speaks" series in October 2016. 

Coates also cites Patrick Sharkey, Professor of Sociology at New York University, whose book, Stuck in Place (University of Chicago Press, 2013), showed that black families making $100,000 a year or more live in more-disadvantaged neighborhoods than white families making less than $30,000.

Associated Press | Quoted: Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Bloomberg Markets | Roundup of new research highlights "The New Lifecycle of Women's Employment," by Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard, and Joshua Mitchell (Ph.D '11), Senior Economist, U.S. Census Bureau.
​​​​​​​View the research... Read more about She works hard for the money

The Atlantic—CityLab | The odds that kids will do better than their parents have plummeted. One possible fix: Learn from the neighborhoods in which income mobility is still thriving. Features new study and earlier research by economists Raj Chetty of Stanford and Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard from their Equality of Opportunity project. 

The 74 | Features Ann Owens (Ph.D. '12) and findings of her work, which has examined racial and income segregation in schools. Owens is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences at USC and a 2016-17 NAEd/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

Wall Street Journal | Our minds play tricks on us, limiting the effectiveness of our efforts. Cites study in Science by Michael I. Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and collaborators Elizabeth W. Dunn and Laura B. Aknin, both of University of British Columbia, which showed that spending money on others promotes happiness.
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The Atlantic | Features Robert Manduca, Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy, a co-author of the study discussed in this article. The findings come from a new paper out of the Equality of Opportunity project, led by economists Raj Chetty of Stanford and Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard.
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The Atlantic—CityLab | Delves into a major recent study by Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, which examines the spatial foundations of persistent inequality. The study referenced in the article is part of the volume Economic Mobility, a new publication released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
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Business Insider | Do cash transfers to the poor lead to increased purchase of "temptation goods"? New study by David Evans (Ph.D. '05), a senior economist at the World Bank, and Anna Popova of Stanford University examines the evidence from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and concludes no. Their work is forthcoming the in the journal Economic Development and Cultural Change.
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Awardee | Deirdre Bloome (Ph.D. '14)

Awardee | Monica C. Bell, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy... Read more about Monica Bell receives four ASA awards for outstanding paper

Awardee | Robert Putnam

Awardee | Queenie Zhu, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology & Social Policy... Read more about Queenie Zhu receives ASA Sociology of Education Outstanding Graduate Student Paper award

Awardee | Katherine Levine Einstein (Ph.D. '12)... Read more about Katherine Levine Einstein awarded APSA Urban Politics paper prize

Awardee | Patrick Sharkey (Ph.D. '07)... Read more about Early Career Award for Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility

Awardee | Christopher Muller (Ph.D. in Sociology, '14)

Sixteen Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows receive their Ph.D's. See what's next for these grads.

Awardee | Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy)... Read more about Sarah Cohodes awarded W.T. Grant Foundation research grant

Awardee | Vesla M. Weaver (Ph.D. '07)... Read more about Best Book in Urban Politics

Awardee | Jessica Simes, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology... Read more about Jessica Simes awarded SSSP paper prize in crime research

Awardee | Ariel White, Ph.D. candidate in Government

Awardee | Anthony A. Jack, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology.... Read more about Anthony Jack awarded NAEd/Spencer dissertation fellowship

Harvard Magazine | Devah Pager

Awardee | Hope Harvey, Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy... Read more about Hope Harvey selected to join UPenn Summer Institute on Inequality

Awardee | Anthony A . Jack, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology... Read more about Anthony A. Jack awarded SSSP paper prize in education

Awardee | Theda Skocpol

Awardee | Claudia Goldin.  Membership in the American Philosophical Society, the country's first learned society, "honors extraordinary accomplishments" in all academic fields.

Awardee | Bruce Western

Harvard Gazette | Roland Fryer

Jal Mehta (PhD '06) is the 2016–2017 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute and Associate Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Health Affairs | By Amitabh Chandra, Michael Frakes, and Anup Malani. Chandra is Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. This issue of Health Affairs (June 2017) is devoted to 'Pursuing Health Equity.'
See issue contents

Scholars Strategy Network | By Nathan Wilmers, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology

Scholars Strategy Network | by Christopher Jencks

Scholars Strategy Network | by Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver (Ph.D. '07)

Brookings Institution | By Elisabeth Jacobs (Ph.D. '08)

Scholars Strategy Network | by Bruce Western

Scholars Strategy Network | by Laura M. Tach (Ph.D. '10)

Scholars Strategy Network | by Alix Gould-Werth and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy).

Scholars Strategy Network | by Ann Owens (Ph.D. '12)