Moving on Up?

Economic Mobility in America

April 26, 2006, 12:00am – 12:00am

About This Event

Moving on Up? Economic Mobility in America

Featured Speakers:
Tom Hertz, Assistant Professor of Economics, American University
Bhashkar Mazumder, Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Executive Director of the Chicago Census Research Data Center
Isabel V. Sawhill, Senior Fellow and Vice President & Director of Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution

Moderated by:
Sebastian Mallaby, Columnist and a Member of the Washington Post's editorial board, The Washington Post

Introduction by:
Derek Douglas, Associate Director for Economic Policy, Center for American Progress

We are proud to believe in America as a land of opportunity, a land where a child born into poverty can work hard, join the middle class, or even achieve great wealth. That concept of economic mobility is at the heart of the American Dream. But how much economic mobility do Americans enjoy compared to residents of other countries? How do education, health, and race affect mobility? And what can we do to increase economic mobility? To answer these questions, the Center for American Progress recently commissioned a new analysis of economic mobility, using several different measures and international comparisons. The results will be surprising and controversial. A distinguished group of experts will discuss the Center's new paper and offer their own ideas about mobility in America. This is the first event for the Center's new initiative on increasing mobility in America.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Program: 12:00 P.M. to 1:30 P.M
Lunch will be served at 11:30 A.M.
Admission is free.

Center for American Progress
1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Maps and Directions

Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center

Resources

Video

• Intro: Derek Douglas
• Sebastian Mallaby
• Tom Hertz
• Bhashkar Mazumder
• Isabel V. Sawhill
• Panel Q and A

Note: All video provided in QuickTime (MPEG-4) format.

Other Materials

• Understanding Mobility in America, by Tom Hertz, American University, April 26, 2006
• Slide Presentation: Understanding Mobility in America (Flash Required)
• Event Transcript

Biographies

Tom Hertz is an Assistant Professor of Economics at American University. His research relates to labor market issues in both high-income and low-income nations, including the economic rewards to education, the extent and structure of intergenerational mobility, and the effects of minimum wage legislation. His work on education has appeared in the American Economic Review, and a paper on trends in intergenerational mobility is forthcoming in Industrial Relations. His research on mobility has been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. Prior to coming to American University, Hertz spent a year as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Health and Well-Being at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1995-96 he served as staff to South Africa's Labour Market Commission. Hertz received an A.B. degree in philosophy from Harvard College, and M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Bhashkar Mazumder is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and executive director of the Chicago Census Research Data Center. His research interests include labor economics, education and health economics with a focus on issues related to intergenerational economic mobility. Mazumder’s research has been published in leading economic journals such as the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His research has also been cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the Chicago Reader. Mazumder is also serving as a co-editor for a symposium on intergenerational mobility at the journal Industrial Relations . In addition to his research activities, Mazumder also oversees the operations of a research center enabling access to Census microdata on behalf of a consortium of five institutions including Argonne National Labs, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Mazumder received a B.A. in political science from New York University, an M.A. in economics from New York University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Isabel V. Sawhill is a Senior Fellow and Vice President & Director of Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Brookings, Dr. Sawhill was a Senior Fellow at The Urban Institute. She also served as an Associate Director at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995, where her responsibilities included all of the human resource programs of the federal government, accounting for one third of the federal budget. In addition, she has authored or edited numerous books and articles including Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005: Meeting the Long-Run Challenge and Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget, both with Alice Rivlin; One Percent for the Kids: New Policies, Brighter Futures for America's Children; Welfare Reform and Beyond: The Future of the Safety Net; Updating America's Social Contract: Economic Growth and Opportunity in the New Century; Getting Ahead: Economic and Social Mobility in America; and Challenge to Leadership: Economic and Social Issues for the Next Decade . Her research has spanned a wide array of economic and social issues, including fiscal policy, economic growth, poverty and inequality, welfare reform, the well-being of children, and changes in the family. Dr. Sawhill helped to found, and now serves as President of the board of, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a nonprofit organization devoted to reducing teen pregnancy in the United States. She has been a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law School, Director of the National Commission for Employment Policy, and President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. She also serves on a number of boards. She attended Wellesley College and received her Ph.D. from New York University in 1968.

Sebastian Mallaby is a Washington Post columnist and a member of the paper's editorial board. He was a 2004 Pullitzer Prize finalist for editorial writing. Mallaby spent 2003 as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he wrote a history of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn. The book, entitled The World's Banker, appeared in October 2004. It was named as an "Editor's Choice" by the New York Times and became a Washington Post bestseller. Mallaby joined the Post in 1999 after thirteen years with The Economist Newspaper of London. Between 1997 and 1999 Mallaby was The Economist's Washington bureau chief and wrote the magazine's weekly Lexington column on American politics and foreign policy. Mallaby has also contributed to numerous other publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Prospect, The National Interest, The New York Times, Policy Review, Slate and The New Republic. He is the author of After Apartheid: The Future of South Africa, which was listed by the New York Times as one of the notable books of 1992. His essay on failed states in Foreign Affairs in 2002 was cited by commentators in The New York Times, The Financial Times and Time Magazine . Mallaby was educated at Oxford. He graduated in 1986 with a First Class degree in Modern History.

Derek Douglas is the Associate Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, Derek directs the Economic Mobility Program, which focuses on issues that bear directly on the economic condition and social mobility of low- and middle-income families, such as higher education, housing and debt. Prior to joining the Center, Derek was a Counsel in the Strategic Counseling Practice Group at O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where he advised clients on matters with a close nexus to politics, legislation or regulation. In this capacity, Derek worked with members of Congress, Administration officials and their respective staffs in advising clients on matters involving congressional hearings and investigations, federal and state legislative developments, and international and federal regulatory enforcement issues. Before joining O'Melveny, Derek was an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where he specialized in the area of education. Derek joined LDF by way of a Skadden Fellowship, which is a public interest fellowship given each year to 25 law school graduates throughout the country. Derek graduated from the University of Michigan with Highest Honors in Economics, and from the Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale, Derek clerked for The Honorable Timothy K. Lewis on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Derek also worked in the Economic Studies Program at The Brookings Institution as a Research Assistant to Dr. Charles Schultze.

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW
Washington, DC 20005