On Monday, May 23, 2016, RSF president Sheldon Danziger and several RSF grantees and scholars will participate in a policy forum on strengthening the social safety net, hosted by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The event will focus on three new papers released by the Hamilton Project that explore the effects of the 2008 fiscal stimulus designed to combat the Great Recession. Forum participants will discuss whether the stimulus contained the correct mix of tax cuts and targeted government spending, and whether it optimally utilized income support programs—notably TANF and SNAP—to stabilize the economy and protect millions of households from falling into poverty.

The first panel in the forum will discuss a proposal to strengthen the safety net through improvements to SNAP by RSF Visiting Scholar James P. Ziliak (University of Kentucky), and a proposal to make TANF more effective in serving needy families during economic downturns by incoming RSF Visiting Scholar Hilary Hoynes (UC Berkeley) and Marianne Bitler (UC Davis). RSF president Sheldon Danziger will speak on the panel along with Congressman Jim McGovern (Massachusetts) and Robert Greenstein (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). The discussion will be moderated by RSF grantee Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (Hamilton Project).

The second panel will focus on a new proposal by RSF author and former trustee Alan S. Blinder (Princeton University) that examines how to better leverage fiscal policy to mitigate the effects of future recessions. Blinder will be joined by panelists Cecilia Muñoz (White House Domestic Policy Council), Marc H. Morial (National Urban League), Alice M. Rivlin (Brookings Institution), and moderator Roger C. Altman (Evercore).

In October 2015, the National Academy of Social Insurance hosted a roundtable, "Rethinking Unemployment Insurance," with support from the Russell Sage Foundation. The event convened a group of experts from academia, government, and public policy institutions to discuss challenges facing unemployment insurance (UI) in the wake of the Great Recession. Participants considered strategies for how to promote reemployment through the UI system, how to redesign the program’s financing, and how to reshape the overall system. Attendees also discussed agendas for future work on UI, both from within government administration and in the policy-research fields.

A new report highlighting the roundtable’s findings, “The Current State of Unemployment Insurance: Challenges and Prospects,” is now available from the Academy. The summary states:

As the crisis of the Great Recession gives way to economic recovery, the federal-state Unemployment Insurance (UI) system that helped sustain the country during the height of unemployment continues its essential function in the American economy. The program that made headlines during each successive wave of extraordinary unemployment compensation extensions continues its fundamental work of providing income replacement to workers laid off from a job. The present period, when the demands on the system are relatively low, is precisely the time to have reasoned conversations about reforming it – before the next high-stress period of sustained and widespread use.

This need for timely reform inspired the National Academy of Social Insurance to convene a roundtable discussion on “Rethinking Unemployment Insurance.” This brief presents the issues, problems, and proposals for reform that were identified at the roundtable, and represents an up-to-date accounting of some of the most pressing issues facing the UI system as articulated by leading experts on the program.

The Russell Sage Foundation is saddened to report the passing of Orville Gilbert Brim, Jr., known as Bert, who served as president of the foundation from 1964 to 1972. During his tenure at RSF, Brim established the Visiting Scholars program and expanded new areas of research, including lifespan development and aging, mental testing and human resource management, and techniques for evaluating social programs.

Brim earned his B.A. in 1947 and his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1951 from Yale. After teaching at the University of Wisconsin, he joined the Russell Sage Foundation and co-authored Experiences and Attitudes of American Adults Concerning Standardized Intelligence Tests (1965), American Beliefs and Attitudes About Intelligence (1969), and co-edited The Dying Patient (1969), among other publications.

Following his time at the foundation, Brim went on to serve as president of the Foundation for Child Development. He was also board chairman of the American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, a longtime member of the board of the William T. Grant Foundation, and led the Research Network on Successful Midlife Development for the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation.

Mary C. Waters (Harvard University) will deliver the 2016 Henry and Bryna David Lecture on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. Waters is a former chair of the Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees, co-author of the RSF book Inheriting the City, co-editor of the RSF books The New Race Question and Becoming New Yorkers, and a recipient of multiple research awards from the foundation.

In her address, Waters will discuss the war on crime and the war on immigrants in the U.S., focusing on how the growth of mass incarceration and of undocumented immigrants has been proceeding along parallel tracks since the 1970s. She will look at these two groups together, arguing that the U.S. has developed a new form of legal exclusion and discrimination.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Click here to register.

The talk will also be livestreamed from the Henry and Bryna David Lecture website at the time of the event.