The Center for Law and Social Policy is based in Washington, D.C., and works to improve the lives of low-income families; see its poverty page. Tom Salyers is the director of communications.

The Center for Community Change is a grassroots organization in Washington, D.C., that helps empower low-income people to improve their communities and public policies. Contact through communications director Donna de la Cruz.

The Rural Policy Research Institute is at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Oregon State University. Charles W. Fluharty, research professor at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, is director. He has a degree from Yale Divinity School.

The National Poverty Center is at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The chair of the steering committee is Sandra Danziger, professor of social work in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

The National Center for Children in Poverty is at Columbia University in New York City. Renée Wilson-Simmons is director.

The Michigan Program on Poverty and Social Welfare Policy is at the University of Michigan. Its director is Sandra K. Danziger, professor in the School of Social Work and research professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

The Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program is at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The director is William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor. His many books include (as co-author) Good Kids From Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context. Contact through administrative assistant, […]

The Institute on Assets and Social Policy is at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. The director is Thomas Shapiro, who is also Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at Brandeis’ Heller School for Social Policy and Management. He is the author of The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality and co-author of Black Wealth/ […]

The Institute for Research on Poverty is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lawrence Berger, chair of the social work doctoral program, is director. He is a co-author of Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America’s Children in Comparative Perspective and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality (2009).