Fourteen months ago, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution convened a working group of experts from across the political spectrum in order to craft a comprehensive plan for addressing poverty and economic mobility in the U.S. today. Now, after over a year of work, the group has succeeded in creating a non-partisan policy report drawn from the best ideas proposed by an interdisciplinary group of researchers. The report, which addresses the domains of family, work, and education simultaneously, is based on common values supported by nearly all Americans: opportunity, responsibility, and security.

Members of the joint Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity include RSF president Sheldon Danziger, and a number of RSF authors, scholars, and grantees, including Lawrence Aber (New York University), David Ellwood (Harvard University), Judith Gueron (MDRC), Ron Haskins (Brookings Institution), Harry Holzer (Georgetown University), Lawrence Mead (New York University), Ronald Mincy (Columbia University), and Jane Waldfogel (Columbia University).

Authors Karl Alexander, the late Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson have been named winners of the 2016 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for their 2014 RSF book The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood. In their study, the authors followed nearly 800 Baltimore-area urban youths from first grade through adulthood and found that socioeconomic status trumps education when it comes to life outcomes. Their research spans nearly three decades and challenges the idea that access to public education means equal opportunity.

“Studies of this depth and breadth that include Census data, historical narratives, personal interviews, race, gender, family background, neighborhood and school conditions and social mobility over a lifetime are quite rare,” said award director Melissa Evans-Andris. The research featured in The Long Shadow has been profiled by outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, the Baltimore Sun, and Education Week.