The livestream below will begin at the time of the event.

The prevalence of child poverty has at last received significant coverage in mainstream political debates this year. This attention has led to some major wins in the battle against child poverty, including the important expansion of the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan Act. These victories are critical to cutting child poverty in the United States, but also highlight the importance of reevaluating how we understand child poverty today.

Join us on Monday, May 3 from 2:00 to 3:00 PM ET as we discuss a new report from The Century Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative that makes the case for adopting a relative poverty measurement in the United States, based on international research, theoretical arguments, and concrete examples. After the discussion, stick around for a Q&A with the experts.

Please register to obtain the Zoom link.

Introductory Remarks:

  • Mark Zuckerman, president, The Century Foundation

Featuring:

  • Carolyn Barnes, assistant professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University
  • David Brady, professor and director of the Blum Initiative on Global and Regional Poverty at the University of California, Riverside
  • Shawn Fremstad, senior policy fellow, Center for Economic and Policy Research
  • Emma Mehrabi, director of poverty policy, Children’s Defense Fund
  • Rebecca Vallas, senior fellow, The Century Foundation

Moderator: 

  • Jeff Madrick, author, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative

Presented by The Century Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Speaker Bios

Carolyn Barnes, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Her research agenda broadly explores the social and political implications of social policy on low-income populations in the areas of childcare policy, family services and supports for young children. Her book, “State of Empowerment,” is an in-depth organizational ethnography that examines how publicly funded after-school programs shape the political behavior of low-income parents. Barnes has initiated a new line of interdisciplinary research that examines how social policy implementation reproduces racial inequality in rural southern communities. She completed a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, where she worked as an affiliate of the National Poverty Center conducting research on the effects of nonprofit community-based service provision on parenting practices and the psycho-social well-being of families and children.

David Brady is a professor in the School of Public Policy and director of the Blum Initiative on Global and Regional Poverty at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a research professor in Inequality and Social Policy at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He is the author of Rich Democracies, Poor People; and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty.

Shawn Fremstad is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Fremstad has worked in direct service at the local level, policy advocacy at the state level, and policy research and analysis at the federal level. Previous positions include senior policy analyst and deputy director of income security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. After graduating from the University of Minnesota Law School, he worked as a civil legal services lawyer in Minnesota for seven years. His writing has appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, National Journal, and other publications, and he has been quoted or cited in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, All Things Considered, Vox, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. He was a Ford Foundation Public Voices Fellow and is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Jeff Madrick is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is a former economics columnist for the New York Times. Before Invisible Americans, Madrick published Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World (Knopf) in 2014, which makes a comprehensive case against prevailing mainstream economic thinking. He is the author of a half dozen other books, including Taking America (Bantam) and The End of Affluence (Random House), both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America also was chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books of the year.  He edited a book of public policy essays, Unconventional Wisdom (The Century Foundation) and also authored the book Why Economies Grow (Basic Books/Century) and Age of Greed (Knopf). His book The Case for Big Government (Princeton) won a PEN America non-fiction award.

Emma Mehrabi is the director of poverty policy at the Children’s Defense Fund, working to advance and lead policy and advocacy efforts to end child poverty. Emma has worked on domestic poverty issues for over a decade, including seven years spent working in Congress for Representative Barbara Lee, and serving most recently as her legislative director. Emma is a social worker by training and holds a master’s of social work focused in policy and nonprofit management from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

Rebecca Vallas is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where her work focuses on economic justice. Vallas joins TCF after seven years at the Center for American Progress, during which she helped to build and lead CAP’s Poverty to Prosperity Program, in a range of roles, including as the program’s first policy director and managing director, and later as vice president. During her time at CAP, Vallas also helped to establish CAP’s Disability Justice Initiative—the first disability policy project at a U.S. think tank—as well as the organization’s criminal justice reform work. Vallas has authored dozens of policy reports on antipoverty policy, income security, disability policy, access to justice, and criminal records/reentry policy; testified before Congress and state legislatures on numerous occasions; and been cited and quoted in media outlets across the country. She is also the creator and host of Off-Kilter, a nationally distributed podcast about poverty, inequality, and everything they intersect with. Vallas serves on the board of directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance and is a member of the Academy’s 2020–2021 Economic Security Study Panel. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology.