Russell Sage

2012 Doris Lecture: Jane Waldfogel, "What the U.S. Can Learn from Britain's War on Poverty"

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2012 John Doris Memorial Lecture Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Cornell University March 26, 2012 In 1999, then Prime Minister Tony Blair made a remarkable pledge to end child poverty, and over the subsequent decade, he and Gordon Brown (initially as Chancellor, and later as Prime Minister) carried out an ambitious and multi-faceted anti-poverty campaign. Although their New Labour government did not succeed in ending child poverty, they did make a substantial dent in it, reducing child poverty by more than half if measured in absolute terms as we do in the United States. In this talk, based on her book Britain's War on Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), Waldfogel will describe Britain's ambitious reforms and lessons for the United States. Jane Waldfogel, is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work for the Prevention of Children's and Youth Problems, Columbia University School of Social Work and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. Waldfogel received her Ph.D. in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has written extensively on the impact of public policies on child and family well-being. Her books include: Britain's War on Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008); What Children Need (Harvard University Press, 2006); Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000); and The Future of Child Protection: How to Break the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect (Harvard University Press, 1998). Her current research includes studies of work-family policies, improving the measurement of poverty, and understanding social mobility across countries.