Message from the Director, Timothy M. Smeeding

I am both pleased and proud to be back at my alma mater (Ph.D. in economics, 1975) to take the helm as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty, the nation’s original poverty research center, established in 1966 and still going strong in 2008.

Before discussing my plans for IRP, I’d like to briefly share where I’ve been.

I entered Wisconsin’s economics program in summer 1971 as a research assistant with IRP, and later wrote my doctoral thesis on the antipoverty effects of noncash transfers under Robert Haveman, John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Affairs, who was director of IRP at the time. During my stay and in the following years, I found myself at a focal point of poverty research and policy evaluation. Institute scholars were leading the way, making connections across disciplines, between scholars and policymakers, and throughout the country. I count myself as fortunate to have been part of this movement. The training and mentoring I received at IRP provided a solid foundation for my later work. Although I guess I never really left IRP, as I was a visitor in 1979 working with Bob Lampman and Irv Garfinkel, then IRP director, and I’ve been an active research affiliate since 1980.

My research interests include the economics of public policy, especially social policy and at-risk populations; poverty and income distribution, income transfers, and tax policy; and health economics. In 1983, I founded the Luxembourg Income Study, an independent nonprofit research center and cross-national database of income, wealth, labor market, and demographic information of citizens from more than 30 countries; I directed the LIS project until 2006. My current research portfolio includes a project to break new ground by extending the LIS research and data to middle-income countries (a World Bank classification based on gross national income per capita), including China, Brazil, and India.

I have published more than a dozen books, including: Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America’s Children in Comparative Perspective (2003), co-authored with Lee Rainwater; The Future of the Family (2004; paperback ed., 2006), co-edited with Daniel P. Moynihan and Lee Rainwater; and Immigration and the Transformation of Europe (2006), co-edited with Craig Parsons. I am co-editor of the Oxford University Press's forthcoming Handbook of Economic Inequality (January 2009). I have also published hundreds of articles in leading journals in economics, public policy, political science, sociology, economic and social statistics, and demography. Visit "About the Director" to see a list of select recent working papers. I have held a number of academic and administrative positions, most recently as the director of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University. My tenure home at UW–Madison is the La Follette School of Public Affairs, where I am Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs.

In brief, I have stayed busy. And I bring the same energy and enthusiasm to IRP that I have carried over the past 30-odd years since I left Madison. I am attracted to IRP because we have learned a great deal about how to reduce poverty in our nation, and I believe that now is the time to apply that knowledge to a renewed drive to reduce poverty and enhance social and economic mobility for those who are less fortunate. In England, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were able to halve absolute poverty within 10 years by making poverty reduction a national goal and devoting one percent of national income to that goal. America can have the same success if it also makes poverty reduction a national goal, one funded and pursued by governments and nonprofits alike. I want IRP to be a leader in the research and policy evaluation guiding this movement.

I’d like to close with a warm acknowledgment of the IRP directors who have preceded me: Maria Cancian (2004–2008); John Karl Scholz (2000–2004); Barbara Wolfe (1994–2000); Robert Hauser (1991–1994); Charles Manski (1988–1991); Sheldon Danziger (1983–1988); Eugene Smolensky (1980–1983); Irwin Garfinkel (1975–1980); Robert Haveman (1971–1975); Harold Watts (1966–1971); and Robert Lampman, founding director. On the shoulders of these giants I hope to further build IRP.

—Tim Smeeding, August 1, 2008