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The New Yorker Recommends: "The Privileged Poor"

June 20, 2019

The New Yorker | "The lasting beauty of  [Anthony Abraham Jack's] ethnography is that it gives a voice to the students who, as his research ends up revealing, most need it," writes Eren Orbey about The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disdvantaged Students (Harvard University Press, 2019). Anthony Jack received his PhD in Sociology and 2016 and is now Assistant Professor of Education at Harvard and a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.



Forty-Five Experts Elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance

February 14, 2019

National Academy of Social Insurance | Inequality & Social Policy faculty members Amitabh Chandra (Harvard Kennedy School) and  David Laibson (Economics) and alumna Elisabeth Jacobs PhD 2008 (Senior Director for Family Economic Security, Washington Center for Equitable Growth) are among the 45 newly-elected members of the National Academy of Social Insurance. The Academy solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security. 



Paid Family and Medical Leave in the United States: A Research Agenda

October 22, 2018

Washington Center for Equitable Growth | By Elisabeth Jacobs PhD 2008, Senior Director for Family Economic Security, Washington Center for Economic Growth.



For Professor Van C. Tran, Former Refugee Who Went from Hostos to Harvard, Joining the Graduate Center is about Values

December 10, 2019

The Graduate Center, CUNY | In-depth profile of Van C. Tran's research, his story, and his life. Van C. Tran received his PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard in 2011. He is now Associate Professor of Sociology and Deputy Director for the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Listen to Van C. Tran interview on The Thought Project ►






How Harvard admissions can be a barometer of our deepest divides

September 27, 2019

CNN Opinion | By Jennifer Lee and Van C. Tran (PhD 2011). Van C. Tran is associate professor of sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Jennifer Lee is professor of sociology at Columbia University.



Being a Black Academic in America

April 18, 2019

Chronicle of Higher Education | In the wake of the Operation Varsity Blue bribery scandal, The Chronicle Review asked graduate students, junior professors, and senior scholars what it’s like to be an African-American academic today. Includes responses by Michael Javen Fortner PhD 2010, Matthew Clair PhD 2018, and Nadirah Farah Foley, a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.



Alexandra Killewald and Brielle Bryan: ASA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship in Population

August 15, 2019

Awardees | Alexandra Killewald and Brielle Bryan PhD 2018 received the American Sociological Association's Population Section Award for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship for "Falling Behind: The Role of Inter- and Intragenerational Processes in Widening Racial and Ethnic Wealth Gaps through Early and Middle Adulthood," published in Social Forces in 2018. Alexandra Killewald is Professor of Sociology. Brielle Bryan earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy in 2018 and is now Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rice University.

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What States Can Do to Drastically Reduce Child Poverty

May 6, 2019

Governing | By Meg Wiehe and Christopher Wimer PhD 2007. Building on the federal Child Tax Credit would yield dramatic results, Wiehe and Wimer argue. Christopher Wimer received his PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard and is now Co-Director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.



The Inflation Gap

November 5, 2019

Atlantic | A new analysis by Christopher Wimer PhD 2007, Sophie Collyer, and Xavier Jaravel suggests not only  that rising prices have been quietly taxing low-income families more heavily than rich ones, but also that, after accounting for that trend, the American poverty rate is significantly higher than the official measures suggest.

Wimer received his PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard in 2007 and is now Co-Director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy (CPSP) at Columbia University. Xavier Jaravel received his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard in 2016 and is now Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Jaravel's research on inflation inequality—showing that prices have risen more quickly for people at the bottom of the income distribution than for those at the top—which informs their analysis of the poverty rate, appears in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2019).

View the brief: The Costs of Being Poor ►
View the research: Quarterly Journal of Economics  ►






A conservative scholar questions whether the US really has an inequality problem

July 27, 2018

Quartz | Interview with Scott Winship PhD 2009, now Executive Director of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.

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