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The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy’s faculty, staff, research fellows, and students are committed to achieving a deeper understanding of the barriers we face to greater equality and access to opportunities for all. Through rigorous research, quantitative and qualitative in nature, we offer policy solutions that have the potential to reduce or eliminate barriers and improve people’s lives. 

Spotlight

 

HKS Faculty Tackling Extreme Economic Inequality

A new HKS Magazine article on inequality research at HKS features a number of Malcolm Wiener Center faculty and programs, including Gordon Hanson and the Reimagining the Economy project; the Stone Program; David Deming and the Project on Workforce; and Daniel Schneider and the Shift Project.

Read the HKS Magazine Article
 

Inaugural Economics for Inclusive Prosperity Conference

The Economics for Inclusive Prosperity Conference will be livestreamed for virtual participants on March 30th and 31st. The conference brings together leading scholars committed to generating innovative policy ideas to address pressing issues such as rising inequality and macroeconomic instability. 

Register for the livestream
 

Dani Rodrik Q&A: Economics for Inclusive Prosperity

In his Q&A with the Malcolm Wiener Center, Dani Rodrik discusses the upcoming inaugural Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) conference and how economics can be a tool for creating inclusive societies.

Read the Q&A
 

New Video: We Were Too Optimistic About Globalization

Workers without college degrees are being left behind and solving this problem will require new ways of thinking. To address this, Gordon Hanson says policymakers will have to consider approaches that were once thought too economically intrusive. Hanson is the co-director of Reimagining the Economy.

Watch the video
 

Safeguarding rights to health care for the incarcerated

Research by Marcella Alsan, Crystal Yang, and colleagues published in the New England Journal of Medicine reviews the perilous state of health care in U.S. correctional facilities and the constraints on legal rights to treatment. The authors propose two changes that could safeguard these rights.

Read the article
 

A Conversation on Policing and Racial Justice

On February 27, the Institute of Politics hosted Cornell William Brooks, Yanilda María González, and Malcolm Wiener Center Director Sandra Susan Smith to discuss the continuing problem of police violence in communities of color and Americans’ responses to it.

Read the HKS article
Explore more spotlighted content
Two women stock shelves.

The Gender Wage Gap and Devaluation of Women’s Work

Daniel Schneider and the Shift Project find that gender segregation between companies contributes significantly to the gender wage gap in the service sector. The study, inWork and Occupations, also finds that this gender wage gap leads to women receiving both less in pay and fewer working hours.

A sheriff stands in front of an American flag and a screen with a bar graph.

Calculating the True Cost of Crime and Punishment

A new course, A Performance Evaluation of the Criminal Legal System, asked students to gather public and internal budgeting data to determine whether the criminal legal system is effective enough to justify the costs and the harm that it perpetrates on the most marginalized people in society.

A woman's smiling face.

2023 Malcolm Wiener Lecture with Gillian Tett

Gillian Tett presented the 2023 Malcolm H. Wiener Lecture in International Political Economy: "From Tunnel Vision to Lateral Vision; How Anthropology can help us all make (better) sense of global risks." Gillian Tett is chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times.

A windmill.

Avoiding Job Loss in the Transition to Renewable Energy

In the shift to green energy, Gordon Hanson says policymakers must act now to blunt job losses by being prepared to offer help to workers affected by mass layoffs. He discussed his paper written for the Aspen Economic Strategy Group in a webinar with John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President. 

Programs and Initiatives

The Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management

The Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management draws from rigorous research as well as insights from practitioners and people from impacted communities to inform the development of fairer and more just criminal legal system policies, practices, and procedures.

Program in Criminal Justice

The Stone Program

The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality and Social Policy unites faculty, students, and researchers from across Harvard University and beyond to address the causes and consequences of wealth inequalities in different populations around the world.

Stone Program

The Project on Workforce

The Project on Workforce is an interdisciplinary, collaborative project with Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education charting the course for a post-secondary system of the future that creates more and better pathways to economic mobility.

Project on Workforce

The Shift Project

The Shift Project, a joint project at Harvard Kennedy School and UCSF, examines the nature and consequences of precarious employment in the service sector with a focus on how policymakers and firms can improve job quality.

Shift Project

Reimagining the Economy

The Reimagining the Economy project explores local labor market, industrial, and development policies, combined with practitioner insights, to produce multidisciplinary scholarship to reshape narratives about how we achieve inclusive prosperity.

Reimagining the Economy

Other Programs and Initiatives

Explore all of the programs, projects, and initiatives at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

Other Initiatives

News

Stop requiring college degrees for jobs that don’t need them

Vox, March 19, 2023

A Long Day of Hearings for Labor Bills, Guaranteed Sick Leave, Work Schedules

The Connecticut Examiner, March 10, 2023

What’s Next for Globalization?

Project Syndicate, March 9, 2023

What works in workforce development—and how can it work better?

Brookings, March 8, 2023

Supreme Court may halt health care guarantees for inmates

Harvard Gazette, March 2, 2023

Read more news >

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