“So, let’s start with poverty,” says Ezra Klein, editor of Vox, launching a 40-minute interview with Hillary Clinton. “Scholars have estimated that the number of American families living in extreme poverty, under $2 in cash income, has skyrocketed...
The Washington Post reports that Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation is one of the ten most assigned books at Ivy League universities. Originally published in 1984, the book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking...
The Sidney Hillman Foundation has selected $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, for the 2016 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. The prize will be awarded on May 3 at the 66th annual Hillman Prize...
In a recent Atlantic article, “The End of Welfare as We Know It,” author Alana Semuels explores the state of the welfare system today, focusing in on Arkansas in the years following President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reforms.
Semuels argues that the...
In "Precarious Work and the Employment-based Safety Net," an op-ed for the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), Luke Shaefer argues that our current employment-based welfare system overlooks the fact that the poorest Americans can only secure...
Dear friends,
The Ford School is, as they say, on a roll.
Take a look at our public events calendar: we’ll host two Cabinet secretaries in a single week in February! Labor Secretary Tom Perez will deliver a Policy Talks lecture on February 8th...
Published on September 1, 2015, $2.00 a Day, Living on Almost Nothing in America, a book by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, has drawn audiences across the nation. The book, which illuminates extreme poverty in the U.S., has been positively reviewed...
When living in extreme poverty, people make use of whatever assets they have as a means of survival, whether it means selling plasma, junk yard scrapping, food stamps or sex just to get by."It's both depressing and uplifting," Luke Shaefer says of...
Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s new book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, details the lives of Americans in extreme poverty.In a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, the authors estimate that the proportion of Americans living...
“This essential book is a call to action,” writes William Julius Wilson of Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s just released $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Wilson, who is a professor of sociology and social policy at Harvard, writes...
The Ford School is delighted to announce that a number of faculty members will join our community this fall. To introduce them to the Ford School and University, we’re running weekly Q&As throughout the summer that touch on their policy and personal...
Joan and Sanford Weill Hall
Annenberg Auditorium (1120)
This session will examine innovative policies that promote direct cash transfers and tax credits to low-income families, new mothers, and other sectors of society.
Join for a conversation with the co-authors of The Injustice of Place alongside Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan COO Nicole Sherard-Freeman. Released in August 2023, The Injustice of Place sheds light on America’s most disadvantaged communities, tracing the legacies of our nation’s places of deepest need—including inequalities shaping people’s health, livelihoods, and upward social mobility for families.
H. Luke Shaefer and other panelists — to be announced — will discuss the implications of the expanded child tax credit and the potential for the U.S. to adopt a permanent child allowance.
Luke Shaefer will tell the story of case studies in the use of data and evidence to address poverty, making the case that applied research should inform real change
Poverty expert Luke Shaefer and renowned sociologist Celeste Watkins-Hayes in conversation, describing the Ford School's new Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy and how the inclusion of marginalized populations in research and engagement creates powerful social policy change.
Jonathan Cohn discusses his book, “The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage,” which examines the Affordable Care Act — better known as “Obamacare.”
Terri Friedline will discuss her book, Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Won’t Save a Broken System, which takes a critical look at advancements in financial technology (“fintech”) in the banking and financial industries.
Carolyn Barnes will discuss her book, “State of Empowerment: Low-income Families and the New Welfare State,” exploring how government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.
Jeremy Levine will discuss his book, “Constructing Community: Urban Governance, Development and Inequality in Boston,” which explores the complexities of neighborhood redevelopment in Boston.
Indivar Dutta-Gupta, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality in conversation with H. Luke Shaefer about approaches to economic redistribution.
The Poverty Narrative: Confronting Inequity
Join us as we discuss connections between structural racism, and poverty in the U.S., and confronting policies and practices that perpetuate inequity in public health, housing, education and data.
Join Reuben J. Miller as he examines the afterlife of mass incarceration, attending to how U.S. criminal justice policy has changed the social life of the city and altered the contours of American democracy one family at a time.
In this talk Associate Dean Shaefer will chart the journey of recent calls to expand the child tax credit and the rising popularity of the child allowance among poverty scholars, in Congress, and in the Biden Administration.
Join the Ford School’s associate deans to learn how a Ford School master’s degree can help you make an impact on the public good at this critical time.
For almost two decades, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has traveled the globe to put human faces on the devastating problems plaguing the planet — from disease and poverty to violence and exploitation — and on the efforts of individuals and organizations to repair it.
Join professor Frederick Wherry in this discussion about how dignity and respect affect consumers' engagements with and responses to debt. Wherry will share about his work to understand and empower the linkages between lending and human values.
Authors Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer discuss the majorn themes of their revelatory research on income inequality and extreme poverty in the United States.