News Release

National experts lend essays, insights to book
being published by UNC poverty center

CHAPEL HILL - An array of national leaders on topics related to the economic and social challenges posed by poverty in America have collaborated with leaders of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity to publish a book titled "Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream."

The book, due out in April 2007, is a collection of 19 original essays authored by prominent academics and public intellectuals and is the first book published by the center since its creation in February 2005. The publication will include seven sidebars by community leaders describing successful programs run by practitioners and illustrating or expanding upon the principal essays. The book will be published by The New Press, a nonprofit publisher, with proceeds from the book benefiting the center's future programming.

Editors of the book are center director and former U.S. Senator John Edwards; Marion Crain, the center's deputy director and the Paul Eaton Professor of Law at the UNC School of Law; and Arne Kalleberg, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology and senior associate dean for social sciences and international programs in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences.

Center staff members expect this book to be used as a text in college classrooms and as a primer of sorts for interested laypeople, as well as practitioners, policymakers and academics.

"We know we can make progress in the fight against poverty when we focus on the problem and implement smart policies," Edwards said. "But the poverty rate is higher today than it was 30 years ago and the public debate on poverty is stagnant.

"We hope this book will help ignite a nationwide resurgence of innovative thinking and practical solutions for ending poverty. The essays in the book are a reflection of the discussion we have begun over the last two years at the Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity, where we aim to be on the leading edge of this renewed national effort."

Authors featured in the book are:

• Michael Barr, professor at the University of Michigan law school and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution;
  
  
• Jared Bernstein, director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank;
  
  
• Anita Brown-Graham, a professor of public law and government in the UNC School of Government who becomes director of the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University effective Jan. 1, 2007;
  
  
• Carol Mendez Cassell, senior health scientist with the University of New Mexico School of Medicine's department of pediatrics and Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention;
  
  
• Martin Eakes, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Durham-based Center for Community Self-Help;
  
  
• Michael Ferber, marketing and development director for World Vision Appalachia in Philippi, W.Va., and professor of urban geography and urban planning at West Virginia University;
  
  
• Richard Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University;
  
  
• Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and chief executive officer of PolicyLink;
  
  
• Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at Yale University and fellow at the New America Foundation;
  
  
• Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and visiting fellow at the Urban Institute;
  
  
• Jack Kemp, founder and chairman of Kemp Partners, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and former U.S. Congressman;
  
  
• Sara McLanahan, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University;
  
  
• Ron Mincy, Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice at Columbia University's School of Social Work;
  
  
• Katherine Newman, Malcolm Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University;
  
  
• Melvin Oliver, dean of the social sciences division at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and professor of sociology;
  
  
• Dennis Orthner, professor at the UNC School of Social Work; associate director for policy development and analysis at the School's Jordan Institute for Families; and adjunct professor of public policy in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences;
  
  
• Peter Orszag, Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution; co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution; director of The Retirement Security Project at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute; and research professor at Georgetown University;
  
  
• Hilliard Pouncy, visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs at Princeton University;
  
  
• Hugh Price, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution;
  
  
• John Karl Scholz, economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison;
  
  
• Ruston Seaman, executive director of World Vision in Appalachia;
  
  
• Thomas Shapiro, director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University;
  
  
• Michael Sherraden, founder and director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis;
  
  
• David Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former foreign correspondent of The New York Times;
  
  
• Beth Shulman, author of "The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 million Americans and their Families";
  
  
• David Spickard, president and chief executive officer of Jobs for Life in Raleigh;
  
  
• Michael Stegman, director of policy for the Program on Human and Community Development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation;
  
  
• Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School; and
  
  
• William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the Malcolm Weiner Centre for Social Policy at Harvard University.

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School of Law contact: Matt Marvin, (919) 962-4125 or mmarvin@email.unc.edu
Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity contact: Laura Hogshead, (919) 843-9032, laurah@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 962-2093 or lisa_katz@unc.edu