Sheldon Danziger is President of the Russell Sage Foundation and the Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Ford School. He was also Director of the National Poverty Center at the Ford School.…
Luke Shaefer serves as the inaugural director of Poverty Solutions, an interdisciplinary, presidential initiative at U-M that seeks to partner communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty.
Ford School professor Luke Shaefer’s book, The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America (Harper Collins, August 2023) is the recipient of the 2023 Richard A. Lester Book Award at Princeton University. Shaefer, the Hermann and...
Poverty Solutions and the Center for Social Solutions announce the inaugural faculty grants competition to pursue action-based research aimed at ending systemic and institutional racism. The awards, which range from $10,000 to $50,000, are open to...
Ford School Dean Michael S. Barr, Associate Dean and Poverty Solutions Director Luke Shaefer and Alford A. Young Jr., Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies and courtesy faculty at the Ford School, discussed some of the ways...
AMany local governments in Michigan report poverty and economic hardships among their residents, according to a survey from University of Michigan researchers.
Almost half (44 percent) of local officials say more than one in five of their...
“‘Pay for Success’ Projects: financing interventions that address social determinants of health in 20 countries,” a journal article by Ford School researchers Samantha Iovan and Paula Lantz, along with student Shoshana Shapiro (PhD ‘21), was...
New analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau data from 2017 reveals Flint is the poorest city in the U.S. of its size, and that more than half of the city’s child residents are living in poverty, according to a September 17, 2018 article by Zahra...
Valentina Duque (University of Michigan), Natasha Pilkauskas, and Irwin Garfinkel (Columbia University) published a February 1 paper in PLoS ONE: "Assets among low-income families in the Great Recession."
Abstract
This paper examines the...
ANN ARBOR—A new map that streamlines an overwhelming amount of poverty and well-being data will make it easier to understand what's happening in counties across Michigan.
Poverty Solutions—the University of Michigan's major initiative dedicated...
Vox asks “What happens if you replace every social program with a universal basic income?” in a May 30 article by Dylan Matthews. The piece goes on to cite Luke Shaefer’s research on a negative income tax.
The article discusses a recent American...
Luke Shaefer's article, co-authored with David Harris, “Fighting child poverty with a universal child allowance,” is featured in the spring 2017 edition of The American Prospect magazine.
“Most developed countries provide cash to families with...
A paper by Luke Shaefer, Pinghui Wu (University of Michigan), and Kathryn Edin (Johns Hopkins University), "Can Poverty in America Be Compared to Conditions in the World's Poorest Countries?" is forthcoming in the American Journal of Medical...
Kristin Seefeldt (MPP '96, PhD '10) recently spoke with Lakeshore Public Media’s "Regionally Speaking" for a podcast about research from her forthcoming book, “Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the twenty-first century.”
Seefeldt’s research...
With a forthcoming paper on childhood poverty about to be released by the Russell Sage Foundation, Luke Shaefer spoke with New York Times Economic Scene columnist Eduardo Porter for the October 18 story, “Giving Every Child a Monthly Check for an...
The University of Michigan has launched a new initiative to address one of humanity's most critical and seemingly intractable problems: poverty.
Called Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, the initiative will explore and test models...
Natasha Pilkauskas is one of several experts interviewed for the August 11 article “2016’s Best & Worst States for Underprivileged Children” by Richie Bernardo for WalletHub.The article ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia according to a...
Luke Shaefer marked the start of the United Way of Washtenaw County’s annual fundraising campaign by highlighting the increasing and often invisible economic inequality in the local community. According to Lisa Barry from WEMU, who covered the...
Jonathan Cohn, senior national correspondent for the Huffington Post, explores how America’s poor measure up by international standards in, “Yet another conservative argument about poverty appears to be wrong.”The piece explores whether America’s...
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...
The Ford School community will welcome former Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council James Kvaal as a Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence this fall.
The White House announced Mr. Kvaal's departure this morning,...
The Obama administration has announced plans for a $2 billion initiative to test new approaches to fight poverty in the U.S., citing Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s recently published book about Americans living on $2 a day.White House officials say...
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...
A research article by Sandra K. Danziger, Sheldon Danziger, Kristin S. Seefeldt, and Luke Shaefer, "Increasing work opportunities and reducing poverty two decades after Welfare Reform," was published in the November 2015 edition of the Journal of...
In a Washington Post “Wonkblog” posting published last Thursday, Kristin Seefeldt provided insight into the impact a new provision passed by the Kansas legislature could have on poor families. The provision limits the amount of cash welfare...
In “Up by your bootstraps,” a State of Opportunity special that aired today on Michigan Radio, Sarah Alvarez interviews Kristin Seefeldt about “policymaking by anecdote.” “Seefeldt says the number-one myth about poverty she sees making its way into...
Sheldon Danziger spoke to a variety of media outlets about the release of a U.S. Census Bureau report on the nation’s poverty level. According the report, poverty in the U.S. reached a 51-year high with 14.3% of the population falling below the...
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.
Join us for a discussion on life during COVID-19 with Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Chief Medical Executive and Chief Deputy Director for Michigan Department Health and Human Services and Garlin Gilchrist II, Lt. Governor of Michigan.
Michigan League Ballroom and Rackham Graduate School Amphitheatre
This workshop will be the first to take an in-depth look at basic income as a poverty alleviation strategy and spur the next generation of research on basic income studies.
