1. education
2. graduate school

Now inviting applications for the 2015-2016 academic year
The Inequality & Social Policy
Doctoral Fellows Program
A multidisciplinary graduate training program
developed with the National Science Foundation.
For Harvard Ph.D. students now completing their 1st or 2nd year
in Economics, Government, Health Policy, Political Economy and Government,
Public Policy, Sociology, Social Policy, or in a related doctoral program
with a focus in social science research.
Application deadline
Monday, May 18, 2015
University Participants
GOVERNING BOARD
Director
Economics
Devah Pager, AY 2014-15
Lawrence F. Katz
Table of
Contents
Jennifer Hochschild, 2015-16
Government
Harvard Kennedy School
Theda Skocpol
Amitabh Chandra
Christopher Jencks
Sociology
William Julius Wilson
Mary C. Waters
Bruce Western
3
Overview
4
Substantive research areas
Work, wages, and labor markets
FACULTY ASSOCIATES
Urban poverty and segregation
Economics
H a rva rd K en ne dy Sc ho ol
Richard B. Freeman
Mary Jo Bane
Roland G. Fryer
George J. Borjas
Edward L. Glaeser
David T. Ellwood
Claudia Goldin
Ronald F. Ferguson
Family structure and parental roles
Race, ethnicity, and immigration
Educational access and quality
Crime and criminal justice
Political inequality and participation
Institutions, policy, and comparative
welfare state analysis
Archon Fung
Government
Joshua S. Goodman
Ryan D. Enos
Alexander Keyssar
Claudine Gay
Jeffrey B. Liebman
Peter A. Hall
Jane J. Mansbridge
Torben Iversen
Robert D. Putnam
Paul E. Peterson
Maya Sen
Julie Boatright Wilson
Sociology
Jason Beckfield
Lawrence Bobo
Bart Bonikowski
Mary C. Brinton
Matthew Desmond
Filiz Garip
Alexandra Killewald
Michèle Lamont
Orlando Patterson
Robert J. Sampson
Mario Luis Small
6
Proseminar sequence
Malcolm Wiener Seminar Series
Conferences and special events
10
Thomas J. Kane
Fellowship awards and terms
Inequality & Social Policy Fellows
Harvard Graduate
School of Education
David J. Deming
Program components
11
Application and eligibility
Jal Mehta
Richard J. Murnane
Martin West
Administration
Pamela Metz,
Associate Director
Christopher Winship
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Jal Mehta (Graduate School of
Education) and Michèle Lamont
(Sociology and Director, European
Network on Inequality).
Overview
T
he Harvard Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality &
Social Policy began in 1998 as a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training
(IGERT) initiative to foster innovative graduate education that
transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Now supported
by non-federal funding sources, the program is fully open to
both U.S. and international students currently completing their
1st or 2nd year of doctoral study at Harvard.
While the tools of economics, political science, sociology, and
public policy can each illuminate specific aspects of social
policy problems, the Multidisciplinary Program explores how
certain research puzzles might be more effectively addressed
with a multidisciplinary perspective. It aims to produce scholars grounded in the recognized disciplines of their home departments, but who can also navigate the models, methods,
and evidence of scholarship in adjacent social science fields.
In drawing together leading scholars at Harvard and beyond,
the program aims to enrich and extend the work of Harvard
Ph.D. students with shared interests in questions of inequality
and social policy, broadly defined, by providing unique opportunities for cross-disciplinary education and research training.
Doctoral candidates drawn from different disciplines gain opportunities they might not otherwise have to interact and learn
from each other, from Harvard faculty drawn from across the
University, and from the program's extensive network of national and international faculty participants.
An engaged community of scholars
The Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy
offers unparalleled resources for Harvard Ph.D. students working in these research areas. Over 40 Harvard faculty members
participate in the program, drawn from the FAS departments
of Economics, Government, and Sociology; the Harvard Kennedy School; and Graduate School of Education.
Doctoral participants gain membership in an active intellectual
community of faculty and Ph.D. students advancing new research in the study of labor markets, cities and neighborhood
effects, race, immigration, political inequalities, policy interventions, and comparative welfare state institutions—to highlight only a few of its substantive domains. The program now
counts over 140 Ph.D. social scientists among its Alumni.
An integrated program of education and research
Doctoral participants pursue their research interests through an
integrated set of training activities. The three-semester
Proseminar in Inequality & Social Policy, taught by a multidisciplinary team of four faculty members, constitutes the educational core of the program. Ph.D. students gain exposure to
advanced scholarship in other fields and
develop new insights from seeing how
other disciplines approach similar research problems.
Doctoral fellows also attend the weekly
Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social
Policy Seminar Series, which draws to
Devah Pager,
Harvard a rich array of leading scholars
Director, 2014-15,
from other institutions who have been
selected to showcase emerging research areas and stimulate
ongoing discussion of new ideas. Special events and conferences bring together participants for reflection on larger
themes and policy debates.
Generous stipend and research support.
Doctoral fellows in turn are granted generous fellowship support to enable their full participation in the training program.
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Student support is contingent on the program’s funding renewal for AY 2015-2016. But if renewed at current levels, those
selected as Inequality & Social Policy doctoral fellows will be
awarded a dissertation stipend of $27,500, which is reserved
for use at the dissertation research stage (generally G-4 year),
plus $2,500 in individual research funds.
The program may also grant several partial awards or honorary awards, particularly for doctoral fellows who already hold
substantial fellowship resources that effectively ensure five or
more years of full stipend coverage (e.g., NSF, Soros, or Ford
Foundation graduate research fellowship holders). 
Substantive research domains
he training program is structured around eight major research domains, which are meant to be broadly illustrative of the scope of the program rather than exhaustive or
mutually exclusive categories.
T
The research program is problem-driven in the sense that participants—often with different theoretical perspectives—are
motivated by a shared set of empirical research questions. At
its most ambitious level, the program aims to provide a graduate training experience that engages the intellectual resources
of the University in thinking about problems of poverty, disadvantage, and enduring inequality, and that fosters the development of new solutions to important social problems using
the best social science methods.
1. Work, wages, and markets. What are the primary forces influencing the distribution of wages in the US? How have
changing demographics, skill-based technological changes,
globalization, labor market institutions, and government policy on issues like education, immigration, the minimum wage,
and EITC affected wage dispersion?
2. Urban poverty and residential segregation.
Economic and
racial segregation concentrate poor families in certain neighborhoods. How does the neighborhood in which children grow
up affect their life outcomes? What role can transportation
What does Inequality
& Social Policy
encompass?
The program
investigates the causes
and consequences of
inequality, broadly
defined, and policy
interventions to address
these conditions.
policy, housing mobility programs, and economic
development
efforts play in alleviating the effects of urban
poverty?
3. Family structure and
parental roles. What are
the magnitudes, causes,
and consequences of
changes in U.S. family
structure? How much
of this change in family
patterns can be traced
to economic factors?
As employers' claims
on mothers increase,
what has been the impact on families and children? How have
firms changed their approaches toward work
organization to accomThis agenda
modate family demands?
incorporates analysis
Why do women in some
of labor markets,
countries appear to do
poverty, residential
better than in others?
4. Racial disparities,
ethnicity, and
immigration.
What are the facts of
racial inequality in
various domains—in
income and employment,
in health, in crime and
punishment, in housing
and credit markets? What
are the causes and
consequences of racial
disparities? For many
years the American story
appeared to center on a
black/white divide, yet
immigration has
segregation,
disparities in
educational access
and achievement,
family structure and
parental roles, race
and immigration, the
criminal justice
system, political
inequalities, and
comparative welfare
state institutions and
policy.
Page | 4
complicated this picture.
Similarly in Western
Europe, an increasing
flow of immigrants has
begun to challenge the
cultural dominance of the
traditional population.
Muslims in France,
Germany, and Belgium
increasingly find
themselves in segregated
settings, with limited
occupational opportunity.
Yet the social policy
regimes that greet them
are quite different than
those in the U.S. How do
these immigration flows affect native workers, and what
determines different nations’ success or failure in improving
educational and economic opportunities for the children of
immigrants?
5. Educational access and quality.
Most explanations of rising
inequality focus attention on formal education at all levels as
the most powerful mobility device in the United States. Problems of school quality, segregation, parental involvement, and
school governance all contribute to unequal access to the educational credentials important for advancement in the labor
market. A multidisciplinary focus on changing patterns of access to higher education, institutional inequality (reflected in
funding formulas, student/teacher ratios, and teacher qualifications), school dropouts, urban school governance, and the
school-to-work transition presents several possible research
agendas.
cant source of social and economic inequality? What is the
effect of the criminal justice system on those in its penumbra:
the families of the incarcerated, the people who work in police
and corrections agencies, victims of crime and violence, and
whole communities now saturated with criminal justice supervision?
7. Political inequalities, participation, and social capital. The
political consequences of inequality represent another research
agenda. How and when do the consequences of inequality
crystallize into political issues? What are the consequences of
economic inequality for political engagement? How are economic and social inequalities related to problems of social
trust, governance, or the emergence of social movements?
8. Institutions, policy, and the comparative welfare state analysis. Social and economic policies have changed fundamentally
over time and vary cross-nationally in important respects as
well. Macro-level institutional and comparative analyses provide important tools for illuminating the forces reshaping the
welfare state and giving rise to distinct national configurations
or varieties of capitalism. Micro-level institutional approaches
can help illuminate the political-economic incentives underlying the adoption of particular policies, as well as the intended
and unintended effects of specific policies on individual behavior. 
6.Crime, criminal justice, and inequality.
The growth in police
strength and incarceration rates over the last 20 years has
deepened the involvement of the criminal justice system in
poor urban communities in much of the world. In the United
States, prison time has now become a normal life event for
young black men with little schooling. Do the risks of arrest
and incarceration simply reflect patterns of criminal offending? Has the criminal justice system now become a signifi-
Photos (clockwise from top): Seminar lunch;
Jason Beckfield (Sociology); Amitabh
Chandra; George Borjas (both HKS); Robert
Sampson (Sociology).
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Clockwise from top: Edward Glaeser (Economics); Chris Bail
(Sociology) and Scott Winship (Sociology & Social Policy, ’09);
Julie Boatright Wilson (HKS); Roland Fryer (Economics);
Ricardo Ramirez (USC) and Pat Sharkey (Sociology & Social
Policy ’07); Elias Bruegmann, Noam Kirson (both Economics
’08) and Dan Hopkins (Government ’07); Robert Putnam
(Government and HKS); Jane Mansbridge (HKS).
tensive feedback over the course of the year from one or more
faculty advisers in the program. The Proseminar thus offers
participants a uniquely structured setting in which to undertake a significant research project of their own.
Program components
1. Proseminar sequence and research
The Proseminar in Inequality & Social Policy, a three-term
course sequence, serves as the central vehicle for bringing
Inequality doctoral fellows from different disciplines together
in an intensive and sustained multidisciplinary learning experience.
The first two semesters of the Proseminar survey central debates in the program’s eight substantive research areas. Explicitly multidisciplinary in approach, the course is expected to be
taught by a team of four faculty members in 2015-2016: Jennifer Hochschild (political scientist), Christopher Jencks (sociologist/social policy), Lawrence Bobo (sociologist), and
David Deming (economist/public policy). The class is expected to meet Wednesdays, 2-4 pm, in both the fall and
spring terms.
The third-term Proseminar, taken in the fall of the succeeding
year (Mondays, 2-4 pm), is dedicated to the presentation and
advancement to publication of this research paper. Organized
as a research workshop and led by Ryan Enos (political scientist) in AY 2015-2016, it pairs each student with an invited
academic speaker from the Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social Policy Seminar Series (described more fully on pages 78). The invited scholar attends the proseminar class and serves
as principal discussant for the student paper. The participation
of these faculty visitors, selected by the students themselves
for their expertise in the student’s specific research area, affords a rare opportunity for doctoral participants to engage in
an extended discussion of their own research with a leading
national scholar in their research field.
Faculty research apprenticeship. Students are encouraged, although not required, to explore further inequality-related research through a research assistantship with a program faculty
member. Students who are interested in broadening their experiences may find the Multidisciplinary Program’s rich network
of faculty particularly helpful in this respect. Funding for RAships will normally come from the faculty member’s own
sponsored-research grants.
A focus in the first year of the Proseminar is the development
of a major piece of publishable research. Students receive ex-
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2. Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social Policy Seminar
Doctoral Fellows also attend the Malcolm Wiener Inequality
& Social Policy Seminar Series, a public research forum in
which leading scholars in their fields share research with the
Harvard and greater-Boston Inequality & Social Policy community.
Meeting weekly over lunch on Mondays from 12:00-2:00
p.m., the seminar ensures exposure to a diverse set of research
topics and methods. As with the proseminar, the series is explicitly crossdisciplinary in
Exemplary research pro- character, drawgrams are strongly multi- ing liberally
from economdisciplinary, pushing the ics, political
frontiers of research by science, sociolcontinually confronting ogy, and other
new perspectives and en- social science
to illumigaging with the best schol- fields
nate productive
arship being developed in areas for crossother fields. fertilization.
The seminar list
on the following page illustrates the range of substantive interests and modes of inquiry
represented in the seminar.
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Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social Policy Seminar Series
Fall 2014
Spring 2015
DOUGLAS MASSEY, Sociology, Princeton University
The Social Ecology of Inequality.
RAJ CHETTY, Economics, Harvard University
The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children’s Longterm Outcomes.
JEANNE BROOKS-GUNN, Teachers College, Columbia University
Efficacy of Early Childhood Education Programs: How Strong
is the Evidence?
JOHN D. STEPHENS, Political Science, UNC Chapel Hill
Pre-distribution and Redistribution: Alternative or
Complementary Policies?
GREG DUNCAN, Education, UC Irvine
What Kind of Preschool Programs Reduce Achievement Gaps?
BRUCE CARRUTHERS, Sociology, Northwestern University
Credit and Inequality: Linking Macro with Micro.
GARY KING, Government, Harvard University
Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China.
ANDREAS MUELLER, Columbia Business School
A Contribution to the Empirics of Reservation Wages.
ROBERT H. FRANK, Johnson School of Management,
Cornell University
Why Inequality Also Harms the Rich.
CECILIA L. RIDGEWAY, Sociology, Stanford University
“Pollution of Wealth” versus “Pollution of Poverty”: Framing What
Binds Low Status Members to the Group?
DAVID J. VOGEL, Political Science Haas School, UC Berkeley
The Politics of Risk Regulation in Europe and the U.S.
JONATHAN RODDEN, Political Science, Stanford University
The Long Shadow of the Industrial Revolution: Representation and
Policy in the U.S. States.
CHRISTOPHER BERRY, Harris School, University of Chicago
Direct Democracy and Redistribution: Reassessing
the Voter Initiative
CHRISTOPHER WILDEMAN, Policy Analysis and Management,
Cornell University
Geographic Variation in the Cumulative Risk of Maltreatment and
Foster Care Placement for American Children.
TYLER VANDERWEELE, Harvard School of Public Health
On the Causal Interpretation of Race in Regressions Adjusting for
Confounding and Mediating Variables.
HANMING FANG, Economics, University of Pennsylvania
Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process:
Theory and Evidence.
ROBERT PUTNAM, Government, Harvard University
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.
JEFFREY LIEBMAN, Harvard Kennedy School
Pay for Success Contracting Using Social Impact Bonds.
FELIX WARNEKEN, Psychology, Harvard University
The Origins of Cooperation and Fairness: Evidence from Children
and Chimpanzees.
ELIZABETH HINTON, History and AAAS, Harvard University
Federal Policy, Urban Policing, and the Roots of Mass Incarceration.
MATTHEW DESMOND, Sociology, Harvard University
Unaffordable America: Housing, Profit, and Policy.
BETSY LEVY PALUCK, Psychology, Princeton University
Changing Climates of Conflict: A Social Network-Driven Experiment in
56 Schools.
DAVID BRADY, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Rethinking the Risks of Poverty: Prevalences and Penalties in
Comparative Perspective.
STEFANIE STANTCHEVA, Economics, Harvard University
Responses to Taxation among High Incomes,
SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN, Economics, Harvard University
Prediction Policy Problems: Using Machine Learning to Address
Social Problems.
CHRISTOPHER UGGEN, Sociology, Univ of Minnesota
Fluidity and Stickiness in Crime, Punishment, and Inequality.
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John Stephens
(UNC)
and
Katerina
Linos
(Government
‘07) at the
Inequality
Summer
Institute.
3. Conferences and special events
Doctoral Fellows also participate in the program's conferences
and special events, typically held a few times per year.
Doctoral participants gain many opportunities, both through
special events and in the course of the academic year, to meet
and interact with invited national speakers and affiliates
throughout the Harvard community.
Key program requirements
summarized
Participants in the Inequality & Social
Policy program are expected, under the
terms of the fellowships, to:
•
Enroll in three-term Proseminar course
sequence
•
Attend weekly Malcolm Wiener
Inequality & Social Policy Seminar
•
Participate in conferences and
special events organized by the
Inequality program
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iates only, meaning that students who wish to take the course
are advised to apply through the fellowship program.
Fel lo ws hip a w ar ds
Inequality & Social Policy Doctoral Fellows
ontingent on funding availability, the Multidisciplinary
Program in Inequality & Social Policy aims to select 7-8
full-funded doctoral fellows and 2-4 partially-funded
doctoral fellows. All applicants will be automatically considered first for full-funded fellowships and then for the smaller
awards in turn.
Through their participation in the program, those named as
Inequality & Social Policy Fellows will receive:
C
In making award determinations, the selection committee will
take into account existing fellowship resources, particularly
for students who already hold combinations of Harvard funding and multiyear external fellowships (e.g. NSF, Soros, or
Ford Foundation fellowships) resulting in five or more years
of full stipend coverage. In these circumstances, the Inequality
& Social Policy program would likely confer an honorary
award consisting of a more flexible and generous research
fund ($2,500-$8,000) in lieu of a stipend.
The program encourages all interested students to apply, as
participation in the Inequality & Social Policy program confers many resources—intellectual, an academic community,
and financial. Enrollment in the Proseminar course sequence is
capped to assure an intensive cohort experience, with entry
limited principally to Inequality & Social Policy doctoral affil-
(i) A dissertation-stage stipend of $27,500, reserved for use at
the dissertation stage (generally G-4 year) so that fellows may
focus exclusively on dissertation research and writing. This
award is for an academic year, disbursed over 10 months.
Partially-funded fellows will generally receive a half-stipend
of $13,750, disbursed over one academic term.
Honorary awards, for those students already holding substantial fellowship resources (as described above), will generally
consist of a $2,500-$8,000 research fund in lieu of a stipend.
(ii) Individual research fund of $2,500, designed to be used for
field research expenses, data purchases, transcription, RAs for
routine data coding, travel for conference presentations, etc.
(iii) Access to well-equipped computer facilities designed to
facilitate empirical work, and (possibly) office space in the
Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at HKS. 
Photos (clockwise from top): Ron Ferguson; Alex Keyssar (both
HKS); Paul Peterson (Government); Roberto Fernandez (MIT)
and Naomi Calvo (Public Policy, ’07); Mary Brinton
(Sociology).
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Application and eligibility
his program is designed for Harvard Ph.D. students in the
social sciences who are currently completing their 1st or
2nd year of doctoral study. The curriculum focuses primarily on research from the disciplines of economics, political
science, sociology, and social policy. Students from Harvard’s
Ph.D. programs in African and African-American Studies,
Economics, Education, Government, Health Policy, Political
Economy and Government, Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, Social Policy, or in a related doctoral program with a
focus on social science research are eligible to apply.
T
Both U.S. and international students are now fully eligible for
the Inequality fellowship awards. Although the program began
as a National Science Foundation initiative, it is no longer
funded through federal sources, allowing both U.S. and international students to participate equally.
Though students may apply at either the end of their G-1or G2 year, students are urged to apply at the end of the G-1 year
whenever possible, since the additional coursework and other
training activities are best fulfilled at an early stage in students’ graduate careers.
Application forms are available on our website:
inequality.hks.harvard.edu
Applications may be submitted via email (preferred):
[email protected]
Or in hardcopy form to:
Pamela L. Metz
Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
79 JFK Street, Taubman 402 (Box 103)
Cambridge, MA 02138
Application deadline:
Monday, May 18, 2015.
Photos (clockwise from top): Chris Muller (Sociology, Nicole
Deterding (Sociology & Social Policy), and Dan Schrage
(Sociology); Jeffrey Liebman (Kennedy School); Michèle Lamont
(Sociology); Richard Freeman (Economics);
Jessica Welburn (Sociology, ‘11); Claudine Gay (Government);
and Inequality computer lab.
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Cover photos by row, from left to right:
(1) Christopher Jencks (HKS); Torben Iversen (Government); Lawrence Katz
(Economics).
(2) William Julius Wilson (HKS and Sociology); Theda Skocpol (Government);
Orlando Patterson (Sociology), Andrew Clarkwest (Sociology & Social Policy,
Ph.D.’05), and David Ellwood (HKS).
(3) Jennifer Hochschild (Government);Seminar lunch line; Claudia Goldin
(Economics).
(4) Richard Murnane (GSE); Mary Waters (Sociology); Mary Jo Bane (HKS)
and Christopher Winship (Sociology).
(5) “Inside the Administration” event with David R. Harris(former Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services Policy, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services) and Mary Jo Bane (HKS); Peter Hall
(Government); and Bruce Western (Sociology).
Har v ar d U ni v er s it y
M ult idis ci pli nar y Pr o gr am
in In eq ual it y & So ci a l P oli c y
Harvard Kennedy School
7 9 J o h n F . K e n n e d y S t r e e t (B o x 1 0 3 )
C a m b r i d ge , M A 0 2 1 3 8
Te l . (6 1 7 ) 4 9 6 - 0 1 0 9
F a x (6 1 7 ) 4 9 6 - 9 0 5 3
Web: inequality.hks.harvard.edu
E - m a i l : [email protected]
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