Wall Street Journal | Research suggests policy makers could make retirement accounts even more restrictive without reducing their appeal. Discusses findings of an experimental study by John Beshears (Harvard Business School), James J. Choi (Yale), Christopher Harris (University of Cambridge), David Laibson (Harvard Economics), Brigitte C. Madrian (Harvard Kennedy School), and Jung Sakong (University of Chicago).
View the research

The New York Times | The Upshot talks with Harvard economist Claudia Goldin on her recent study with Lawrence Katz, "Women Working Longer: Facts and Some Explanations." Also highlights Goldin's work with Joshua Mitchell (Ph.D. '11), a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, which appears in the current issue of Journal of Economics Perspectives.

"Nearly 30 percent of women 65 to 69 are working, up from 15 percent in the late 1980s, one of the analyses, by the Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, found. Eighteen percent of women 70 to 74 work, up from 8 percent.

"This rejection of retirement is more common among women with higher education and savings, though not confined to them. Those who are not working are more likely to have poor health and low savings, and to be dependent on Social Security and sometimes disability benefits, Ms. Goldin said.

Of those still working, Ms. Goldin said, 'They’re in occupations in which they really have an identity.' She added, 'Women have more education, they’re in jobs that are more fulfilling, and they stay with them.'” 
View the research (by Goldin and Katz)
View JEP article (by Goldin and Mitchell)

The New York Times | "Suppose there were a way to pump up the economy, reduce inequality, and put an end to destructive housing bubbles like the one that contributed to the Great Recession." Discusses recent paper by economists Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Joe Gyourko at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which reviews the basic economics and functioning of the U.S. housing market "to better understand the impacts on home prices, household wealth, and the spatial distribution of people across markets."

Also cites research by Daniel Shoag (Ph.D. '11), Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, and Peter Ganong of the University of Chicago, on the role of housing prices in limiting the ability of low-income workers to migrate to higher-wage areas, thereby contributing income inequality.

The Atlantic—CityLab | Features new research by Michael Hankinson, Ph.D. candidate in Government & Social Policy, on the politics of affordable housing.

Harvard Kennedy School Magazine
By Robert Kuttner
There are economists who teach the well-known postulate that free trade improves global well-being. There are other social scientists and popular critics who contend that laissez-faire trade can be bad for equality, for social stability, and even for economic efficiency, just as pure laissez-faire is not optimal at home.

And then there is Dani Rodrik.

Rodrik, the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School, is close to a unique specimen in the field of economics. He is a respectful critic of some of the most cherished suppositions of his profession, notably in his books and articles expressing qualms about globalization. But Rodrik does it as a superb technical economist, with humility, precision, wit, intellectual curiosity, and an astonishing range of reading across disciplines. Continue reading»

Quartz | Discusses research by David Deming (Ph.D. '10), a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education, who finds that the labor market  in recent decades "increasingly rewards social skills", with "employment and wage growth particularly strong for jobs requiring high levels of both cognitive skill and social skill." Also cites a recent brief from The Hamilton Project, "Seven Facts on Noncognitive Skills from Education to the Labor Market," which draws on Deming's work.
View the research

Harvard Kennedy School Magazine | At Harvard Kennedy School, cities are a focus for research and an opportunity to experiment with new and better ways of governing. Features the work of Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy and director of the Government Peformance Lab, and of Quinton Mayne, Associate Professor of Public Policy, whose research "has found that where local governments can shape welfare policies, such as in education or social services, citizens are much less likely to be politically disaffected."

The New York Times | Thomas B. Edsall reviews an extensive body of social science evidence, including the work of Raj Chetty of Stanford University and Harvard's Nathaniel Hendren, Assistant Professor of Economics.

MIT News | Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard and co-scientific director of JPAL-North America, spoke on leveraging housing vouchers as a ladder to economic mobility for low-income families. 

The conference, held at MIT, brought together state and local policymakers with leading researchers to discuss "how governments and researchers have partnered to use evidence from randomized evaluations to reduce crime and violence, improve maternal and child health, and promote housing mobility."

OZY | Quoted: Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology. 

“[The Tea Party] was never about small government; it was about small government for the elites who latched on,” says Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor and co-author of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. “For the grassroots back then, it was about making sure the government didn’t spend on the wrong people. Rarely did anyone criticize Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits — the big-ticket items.” The biggest common theme, she says: “cracking down on immigration.”

Harvard Gazette | Radcliffe Day 2017, on May 26, will honor PBS journalists Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff. Harvard's Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor, will participate in the morning panel, "(Un)truths and Their Consequences," joined by A’Lelia Bundles '74, E. J. Dionne ’73, and Peggy Noonan. For more information about the day's events, which will be webcast live, see Radcliffe Day 2017.

The New York Times | Quoted: Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government.

Bloomberg | Discusses new study by David Autor (MIT), David Dorn (University of Zurich), Lawrence Katz (Harvard), Christina Patterson (MIT), and John Van Reenen (MIT), which examines the relationship between market concentration and labor's falling share in GDP. This work is forthcoming in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.
View the research

Quartz | Political protests in the first days of the Trump administration generate new interest in a study by Daniel Shoag (Ph.D.'11), Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and colleagues Andreas Madestam (Stockholm University), Stan Veuger (American Enterprise Institute), and David Yanagizawa-Drott (University of Zurich). The study, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in November 2013, seeks to determine whether protests actually cause political change, or whether they are "merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences."
View the research

Also cited: Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson's book, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford University Press, 2012). Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Governmant and Sociology at Harvard. Vanessa S. Williamson (Ph.D. '15) is  a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.

The Atlantic | Features insights of Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee  Professor of Economics. Cites her research, joint with Marianne Bertrand (University of Chicago) and Lawerence Katz (Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics), published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2010), which examined the dynamics of the gender gap for young professionals in the financial and corporate sectors. Also cites Goldin and Katz study, "The Cost of Workplace Flexibility for High-Powered Professionals," published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2011).

The New York Times | Cites research from a coming book by Ryan Enos, Associate Professor of Government at Harvard. Also cites Daniel Hopkins (Ph.D. '07), Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard. 

Enos provides the details of his analysis in a short research note, "Changes in Hispanic Population and Voting in the 2016 Presidential Election."
View research note

The Atlantic | Discusses new study by David Autor (MIT), David Dorn (University of Zurich), Lawrence Katz (Harvard), Christina Patterson (MIT), and John Van Reenen (MIT), which examines the relationship between market concentration and labor's falling share in GDP. This work is forthcoming in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.
View the research

MIT News | J-PAL North America, a research center at MIT, has announced that it has awarded grants to fund randomized evaluations focused on employing behavioral science insights to prevent crime and violence. One of the two grants, awarded to Anuj Shah, Associate Professor of Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth, and Aurélie Ouss (Ph.D. '13), a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Chicago Crime Lab, "will evaluate whether an app designed to lead at-risk youth to participate in safe activities can help them avoid dangerous default situations and behaviors."

Harvard Gazette | With travel to U.S. banned from some nations, Harvard moves to support members of its international community. President Drew Faust's letter to the Harvard community and responses from across the University, including that of Dean Douglas Elmendorf of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Bloomberg | Highlights new study by Harvard economist Amanda Pallais and Alexandre Mas of Princeton, "Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements." Also discusses work of Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, on jobs that may allow greater flexibility in hours without sacrificing pay.

Social Science Research Council | The Anxieties of Democracy program announced that its 2017 Democracy Fellow will be Harvard's Danielle Allen, James Conant Bryant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. As Democracy Fellow, Allen will spend November 2017 in residence at the Social Science Research Council headquarters in New York, where she will participate in a series of "Democracy in the City" public talks and debates, as well as a series of in-house Democracy Seminars. The theme of her residency: "Democracy and Justice."

Los Angeles Times  | The finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced today, including Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City in the current interest category. The prizes will be awarded on April 21, the evening before the L.A. Times Festival of Books begins on the USC campus.

PEN America | Matthew Desmond's Evicted has been named the winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, a biennial award for a distinguished work of nonfiction "possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues." Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, will be honored at the PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony in NYC on March 27.

One of the nation’s most accomplished scholars of race, inequality, and poverty will deliver a public award lecture in June at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

SAGE-CASBS | SAGE Publishing and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University are pleased to announce that William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard, is the 2017 recipient of the SAGE-CASBS Award.

Established in 2013, the SAGE-CASBS Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the behavioral and social sciences that advance our understanding of pressing social issues. It underscores the role of the social and behavioral sciences in enriching and enhancing public policy and good governance. 

Past winners of the award include psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, sociologist and education rights activist Pedro Noguera, and political scientist and former U.S. Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation | Harvard economics professor Amanda Pallais, the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy and Social Studies, has been awarded a 2017 Sloan Research Fellowship.

Sloan Research Fellows are early-career scholars who "represent the most promising scientific researchers working today....Since 1955, Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win 43 Nobel Prizes, 16 Fields Medals, 69 National Medals of Science, 16 John Bates Clark Medals, and numerous other distinguished awards."

Learn more about Amanda Pallais's work:
scholar.harvard.edu/pallais

Awardee | Michèle Lamont is the 2017 recipient of the prestigious Erasmus Prize, awarded annually by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation to the person or institution who has made "an exceptional contribution to the humanities or the arts, in Europe and beyond." Lamont receives the prize "for her devoted contribution to social science research into the relationship between knowledge, power and diversity." 

Lamont is a Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies, the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

The Erasmus Prize will be presented in Amsterdam in November 2017, and a varied program of activities arranged in conjunction with the event. Learn more:
Former Laureates
Prize and Adornments

Harvard Gazette | Harvard Professor Michèle Lamont has been named winner of the 2017 Erasmus Prize, which recognizes individual or group contributions to European culture, society, or social science.

Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, and The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead '91, have been awarded the 2017 Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Nonfiction and Fiction, respectively. Desmond, a sociologist, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Kellogg School of Management| Stone PhD Scholar Daniel Prinz (PhD candidate in Health Policy), Michael Geruso (Assistant Professor of Economics, UT Austin), and Timothy J. Layton (Assistant Professor of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School) have been awarded the 2017 Mark A. Satterthwaite Award for Outstanding Research in Health Care Markets for their paper, "Screening in Contract Design: Evidence from the ACA Health Insurance Exchanges,” subsequently published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2019 11(2): 64–107.

View the research ►

PEN America | Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has been selected as a finalist for the John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. Winners will be announced February 22.

Washington Post | Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has been named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Desmond, a sociologist, is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

President Barack Obama announced the appointment of alumna Carrie Conaway to the 15-member National Board for Education Sciences. "This is fabulous news," wrote Susan Dynarski, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics at the University of Michigan, commenting on the appointment on Twitter. "Conaway has helped put Massachusetts on its path of research-driven, educational excellence."

Conaway is Associate Commissioner of Planning and Research for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Education Week | Education Week released its annual RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence  Rankings, which "recognize those university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice."

Of the top 10 junior scholars on its "rising star" list, all are Harvard faculty members, doctoral alumni, or both—including Inequality & Social Policy affiliates Martin West (Ph.D. and faculty), Jal Mehta (Ph.D. and faculty), Joshua Goodman (faculty), and Sarah Cohodes (Ph.D. '15, now Columbia University Teachers College). HGSE professor Roberto G. Gonzales, author of   Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America (University of California Press, 2015), led the list, which also included HGSE professor Stephanie M. Jones.

Among the Inequality & Social Policy affiliates on the full list of 200 are senior scholars Paul Peterson (Harvard Government), Richard Murnane (HGSE), Roland Fryer (Harvard Economics), Nora Gordon (Ph.D. alum, now Georgetown Public Policy), Jonah Rockoff (Ph.D. alum, now Columbia Business School), Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. alum, now Columbia TC), Ronald Ferguson (HKS), and David Deming (Ph.D. alum and faculty).
View 2017 full list

Awardee | MIchèle Lamont received an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in recognition of her  "important theoretical and empirical contribution to the social sciences, particularly cultural sociology, and her important role in linking American and European social sciences." Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard.

IZA Institute of Labor Economics | The 15th IZA Prize in Labor Economics was formally conferred to Harvard's Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics,during the traditional IZA Reception at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations in Chicago. Goldin was recognized for "her career-long work on the economic history of women in education and the labor market."

Institute for Social Research (Oslo) | Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies, and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard, delivered the 2016 Vilhelm Auberts Memorial Lecture in Oslo. Her lecture addressed the themes of her new book, Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016.)

The Boston Globe | Harvard sociologist and MacArthur Fellow Matthew Desmond, for his "on the ground observations of the daily lives of the American poor."

PBS NewsHour |Jeffrey Brown sat down recently with best-selling authors Jacqueline Woodson, a 2016 National Book Award finalist for fiction, and Daniel Pink, at Politics and Prose, a popular bookstore in Washington, D.C. First up: Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

Quartz | Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, earned a spot on 15 of 36 lists, the most recommended non-fiction book of 2016.

Chicago Tribune | Ten selections, including Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences.

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