Barbara Wolfe is the Richard A. Easterlin Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs and Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses broadly on poverty and health issues.
Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from Emory University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2014) in History from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Merritt’s work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.
Manasi Deshpande is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago Department of Economics and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research interests include the long-term effects of social insurance and public assistance programs and the interaction between these programs and labor markets. Her dissertation on the long-term effects of disability programs received the 2015 APPAM Dissertation Award, the 2015 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award, and the 2016 NASI John Heinz Dissertation Award. She received a Ph.D.
David B. Grusky is Barbara Kimball Browning Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and coeditor of Pathways Magazine. His research addresses the changing structure of late-industrial inequality and addresses such topics as (a) the role of rent-seeking and market failure in explaining the takeoff in income inequality, (b) the amount of economic and social mobility in the U.S.
Anjali Adukia is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. Her research is focused on understanding factors that influence educational decisions and the potential role for institutions such as government agencies and non-profit organizations to improve child outcomes, particularly at the intersection of education and health. Her current work examines how the provision of basic needs - such as sanitation, clothing, and transportation - can increase school participation in developing contexts.
Matthew Desmond is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. He is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.
Timothy M. (Tim) Smeeding is the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) since 2008.
Branko Milanovic is a leading scholar on income inequality. In 2014, he joined the Graduate Center as Visiting Presidential Professor and LIS Senior Scholar. Before coming to the Graduate Center, he was Lead Economist in the World Bank's research department. He is the author of numerous articles on methodology and empirics of global income distribution and effects of globalization. His most recent book "The Haves and the Have-nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality," Basic Books was published in December 2010.
Bruce Meyer, the McCormick Foundation Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, studies poverty and inequality, tax policy, welfare policy, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, minority entrepreneurship, the health care safety net, and labor supply. His most recent work includes research on the effects of welfare and tax reform on the well-being of single mothers, models and methods to analyze labor supply, changes in poverty and inequality, the effects of disability, and the effects of changes in the health care safety net.
Jung-Sook Lee's research focuses on the processes through which social and psychological factors interplay in creating barriers for the social advancement of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. She is interested in developing interventions to facilitate their social advancement by targeting the processes. Jung-Sook Lee has been working on various research projects involving vulnerable children and their families.
