Event

Webinar: Opportunities to Cut Child Poverty: Understanding the Data and Evidence

By American Academy of Political and Social Science

June 15, 2021 1892

Panelists and moderator — Ramesh Ponnuru, left, Rucker Johnson, Elaine Maag, Michael Strain, and Robert Moffitt.

When President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan (ARP) into law in March of this year, observers described it as “the second war on poverty,” almost matching in scope and ambition the first, signed by President Lyndon Johnson 57 years ago. Unlike Johnson’s efforts—which benefited the elderly the most—the ARP will likely have its greatest poverty-reducing impacts on our nation’s children. With provisions of the ARP expiring in a year, Congress will soon decide if it wants to extend the provisions beyond 12 months or make them an ongoing part of the nation’s system for supporting low-income families with children.

This free webinar, scheduled for June 24, will focus on what we know about child poverty and how we know it: what do the economic and social sciences teach us about gainful approaches to reducing child poverty, and how far do the ARP provisions go toward addressing the problem? Drawing on the 2019 National Academies report, “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty,” a panel of experts will discuss what years of rigorous research and analysis tell us about the various policies and investments that contribute to the goal of reducing child poverty—especially disparities in poverty levels across racial and ethnic lines—and the promotion of children’s social and economic mobility.

Panelists:
• Rucker Johnson, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
• Elaine Maag, principal research associate, Urban Institute
• Robert Moffitt, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University
• Michael Strain, director, Economic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

Ramesh Ponnuru, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, will moderate the event, which takes place on Thursday, June 24 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT.

The American Academy of Political and Social Science and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity are co-hosting this webinar, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

American Academy of Political and Social Science

The American Academy of Political and Social Science, one of the nation’s oldest learned societies, is dedicated to the use of social science to address important social problems. For over a century, our flagship journal, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, has brought together public officials and scholars from across the disciplines to tackle issues ranging from racial inequality and intractable poverty to the threat of nuclear terrorism. Today, through conferences and symposia, podcast interviews with leading social scientists, and the annual induction of Academy Fellows and presentation of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, the Academy is dedicated to bridging the gap between academic research and the formation of public policy.

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Published

June 15, 2021