Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Taubman Center

Scott Allard – Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty

Monday, February 12, 2018

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Joukowsky Forum

Book signing and reception to follow

Watch on Youtube

Poverty problems in the U.S. are commonly thought to be urban problems, yet there are many million more poor people in suburban America today than in cities. Far from being just an interesting demographic phenomena, the suburbanization of poverty creates challenges for a safety net that has been predicated on the concentration of poverty in cities since the War on Poverty. Places in Need by former Brown University professor Scott W. Allard explores both the changing geography of poverty in metropolitan America and its consequences for safety net policy moving forward.

Learn more about his book here.

Panelists:
Roberto Gonzales, Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Margaret Weir, Professor of Political Science, Brown University
Michael White, Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Sociology, Brown University

Moderator:
Susan Moffitt, Director, Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy

Scott W. Allard is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Policy and Governance with expertise in the areas of social welfare policy and poverty. Allard is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program and co-primary investigator of the Family Self-Sufficiency Data Center at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are in work and safety net program participation, spatial variation in the delivery of social welfare programs, food security, and the role of nonprofit organizations in the safety net.

Allard has published several articles on the geography of contemporary social welfare policy, residential mobility and spatial mismatches in urban labor markets, and on social service delivery in the post-welfare reform in the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Housing Policy Debate, Policy Studies Journal, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, and Urban Affairs Review. He has received research grants from sources including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), The Brookings Institution, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.