Russell Sage’s Sheldon Danziger to Head AAPSS

Economist and public policy expert Sheldon Danziger, currently the president of the Russell Sage Foundation, will become the president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on September 1. He succeeds Marta Tienda, who has led the AAPSS since 2021.

Danziger is Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. During his time at the Ford School, he was director of the National Poverty Center (2008–2014) and founding director of the Research and Training Program on Poverty and Public Policy (1989–2014), a mentorship and career-development initiative dedicated to supporting emerging scholars from underrepresented groups. Danziger has also taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He holds a BA in economics from Columbia University and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Russell Sage 12 years ago.

The economist has had a long association with AAPSS. He was the academy’s 2010 John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow, and served on the AAPSS’s board of directors from 2013 to 2019. The beginning of Danziger’s tenure as the 14th president of academy follows some recent changes to the AAPSS’s board of directors. Earlier this month, the academy welcomed Leslie Boissiere, Diane W. Schanzenbach, Rogers M. Smith, and Michael R. Strain to the board, following the departures of Suzanne Mettler, Mary C. Waters, and Dominique Brossard.

An expert on the effects of economic and policy changes on trends in poverty and inequality, Danziger has contributed several times to the academy’s journal, The ANNALS, and was guest editor of volume 650, The Effects of the Great Recession (2013). Among his other works are The Price of Independence: The Economics of Early Adulthood (2007), coedited with Cecilia Rouse (2015 Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow); Working and Poor (2006), coedited with Rebecca Blank (2015 AAPSS Moynihan Prize winner) and Robert Schoeni; and Changing Poverty, Changing Policies (2009), coedited with Maria Cancian (2018 John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow and a former AAPSS board member).

Tienda, AAPSS’s outgoing president, is Maurice P. During ’22 Professor Emerita in Demographic Studies and professor emerita of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. She was also an AAPSS fellow, the 2004 Ernest W. Burgess Fellow. (You can read her farewell President’s Corner essay here.)

“Sheldon is the ideal person to lead the academy in these challenging times,” said Tienda. “He is an outstanding administrator, researcher, and institution builder with extensive networks in academics, government and philanthropy. Sheldon’s steadfast dedication to the social sciences and track record in evaluating social policy will advance the academy’s mission of bringing social science evidence to bear on pressing social problems.”