Bishop E. Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America testified about welfare reform July 19, 2006, before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. He expressed concern about persistent poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor in America.

Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. She has commented on welfare reform in a variety of New York publications.

Amy Sherman is one of the country’s frequently quoted experts on faith-based response to poverty and welfare issues. She is director of the Center on Faith in Communities in Charlottesville, Va., and senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research in Indianapolis.

Mark Courtney is a faculty association of the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and since 1999 has analyzed Wisconsin’s innovative program for putting welfare applicants to work. He said in a July 24, 2006, Washington Post editorial that today’s welfare applicants are extremely needy and will need help to work their way out of poverty, which could […]

Jeffrey Grogger is a co-author of Welfare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change (Harvard University Press, 2005), which looks at multiple studies of welfare reform to explain why reform has been successful. He teaches urban policy at the University of Chicago.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., offers a trove of welfare analysis at both state and federal levels, including a searchable database of publications by topic and annual analysis.

Olivia Golden is a senior fellow and director of Assessing the New Federalism Project at the Urban Institute, a policy research group in Washington, D.C. From 1997 to 2001, she was assistant secretary for children and families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She said in a July 24, 2005, commentary that welfare reform has succeeded in […]

Isabel Sawhill is senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings, where she works with the Center on Children and Families and the Future of the Middle Class Initiative. She served as co-director of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Paid Family Leave.

Read a July 11, 2013, article from the New York Post about recent efforts by local governments to reform welfare.