Rebecca Blank to Lecture on Improving Poverty Measurement in the U.S.
Rebecca M. Blank, Robert V. Kerr Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution for 2007-2008, will discuss how poverty is measured in the United States and her various research on this subject in a lecture at Washington and Lee University on Monday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.
The title of her talk is “Improving Poverty Measurement in the United States.” It is free and open to the public.
Blank authored and edited books including Working and Poor: How Economic and Policy Changes are Affecting Low Wage Workers (co-editor and co-author on two articles in the volume); Measuring Radial Discrimination (co-author); and It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty. She is also the author of many journal articles and book chapters.
The Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at the University of Michigan, Blank is on leave from Michigan this year. She is the co-director of the National Poverty Center at the Ford School at Michigan which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She was dean of the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy from 1999 to 2007.
She previously taught at Northwestern University, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was a visiting fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was also a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Blank received her B.S. in economics from the University of Minnesota and her Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her lecture is sponsored by the Shepherd Program on Poverty and Human Capability.
