On Thursday, June 5, 2025, RSF author Jane Waldfogel will launch her RSF book Child Benefits: A Smart Investment for America’s Future at Columbia University’s School of Social Work. In Child Benefits, Waldfogel details the history and origins of child benefits around the world and comprehensively assesses how child benefits affect family spending, fertility, employment, child poverty, and child wellbeing to address such concerns and to determine the benefits of enacting such a policy in the U.S. permanently. At the launch, Waldfogel and Megan Curran, policy director at Columbia’s Center on Policy and Social Policy, will discuss the history and impacts of child benefits, major policy proposals currently under debate, and recommendations for a policy that would deliver the best outcomes for children and families.

Jane Waldfogel is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor for the Prevention of Children's and Youth Problems at the Columbia University School of Social Work and a faculty affiliate at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. She is also the author of RSF book Britain’s War on Poverty, co-author of RSF book Too Many Children Left Behind, co-editor of RSF volumes Steady Gains and Stalled Progress and Securing the Future, a contributor to multiple RSF volumes and issues of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, a former RSF visiting scholar, and a recipient of multiple RSF research grants.

Register to attend the book launch in person here.

Register for the webinar here.

Read more and purchase a copy of Child Benefits here.