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Social Work Research Studies

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Daniel R. Meyer, MSW, MBA, PhD
University of Wisconsin, School of Social Work

  • Professor

Dr. Meyer’s research has centered on the issue of the economic well-being of single-parent families, a problem of critical importance. Most of his work examines child support policy and welfare reform, employing data derived from his various Wisconsin-based projects. With Professor Maria Cancian, he led a team of researchers that evaluated an experimental innovative child support policy. This multi-year, multi-method, multi-disciplinary evaluation demonstrated the advantages of allowing all child support paid by noncustodial parents (usually fathers) to go to the family. In the United Kingdom, a proposed fundamental redesign of their child support system includes a substantially increased pass-through provision. The UK government’s policy proposal includes a reference to the Wisconsin evaluation as evidence for the importance of allowing families to receive more of the child support paid on their behalf. Dr. Meyer worked for the United Kingdom in comparing their child support policies with those in 14 other countries, and participated in a large multi-country study of the effects of the worldwide recession on families with children.

http://socwork.wisc.edu/dan-meyer

 

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Michael Sherraden, PhD
Washington University in St. Louis, George Warren Brown School of Social Work

  • Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development

Dr. Sherraden is the founding director of the Brown School's Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St Louis. CSD tests policy innovations that have the potential to improve social and economic outcomes. He is the author of Assets and the Poor (1991), which proposes Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), matched savings to enable low-income families to save and accumulate assets. Additional research on asset building appears in Inclusion in the American Dream (2005) and Can the Poor Save? (2007). IDAs have been adopted in federal legislation, in more than 40 states, and in many other countries. An IDA program in Seoul, South Korea—known as “Hope Development Accounts”—won a United Nations Public Service Award in 2010. Currently, CSD is undertaking an experimental test of Child Development Accounts (universal accounts at birth) in the State of Oklahoma, and research on youth savings is underway in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal. In another areas of work, Sherraden’s early research on civic service—National Service (1982) and The Moral Equivalent of War? (1990)—contributed to the creation of AmeriCorps in 1993; CSD is today a leading center of research on civic service, especially international service, and has large initiatives to study productive aging in both the United States and China. In 2010, Sherraden was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

http://gwbweb.wustl.edu/FACULTY/FULLTIME/Pages/MichaelSherraden.aspx

 

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Susan Kemp, PhD
University of Washington, School of Social Work

  • Charles O. Cressey Endowed Associate Professor

Dr. Kemp's research interests include supports for low-income families, public child welfare, community-based and environmental interventions, and social work history and theory. Her urban research interests include studying the environmental and sociospatial dimensions of social work practice; the ecological and community-centered approaches to child and family services; public child welfare; and social work history and theory. In 2011, two books co-edited by Dr. Kemp were published: Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Place; and The Paradox of Urban Space: Inequity and Transformation in Urban Communities.

http://socialwork.uw.edu/faculty/susan-kemp
http://depts.washington.edu/wcpc/about/affiliates/kemp

 

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Yolanda Padilla, PhD
University of Texas Austin, School of Social Work

  • Professor of Social Work and Women's Studies

Dr. Padilla's research has primarily focused on contributing to knowledge that advances our understanding of poverty and informs the development of effective social welfare policy. Within the broader area of poverty, she investigates racial and ethnic disparities in health and well-being in the United States, particularly among Latino populations. Her research examines the consequences of poverty for Latino children and families with a focus on health and development in early childhood, the social and economic conditions of Latino children and families living on the US-Mexico border region, and factors associated with socioeconomic disadvantage among Latinos, including immigration. Dr. Padilla is a research affiliate of the National Poverty Center located at the University of Michigan and prior to that was an affiliate of the Joint Center for Poverty Research, University of Chicago/Northwestern University. She has also worked with the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a nationwide research organization based at the University of Notre Dame that brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to conduct policy-relevant research on Latinos. Dr. Padilla is one of the network scholars in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national study of children and families in poverty in the post-welfare reform era based at the Center for Child Wellbeing, Princeton University.

Dr. Padilla has received over $1.5 million in funding for her research from various sources that include the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) as well as from state and private foundation sources. In 2002, she received the Outstanding Research Award from the Society for Social Work and Research for a study on factors influencing the earnings potential of Mexican immigrants. Her publication record includes numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, two journal special issues, and one edited book.

http://www.utexas.edu/ssw/faculty-and-staff/directory/padilla/

 

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Michal Grinstein-Weiss, MA, MSW, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Social Work

  • Associate Professor

Dr. Grinstein-Weiss’s research interests focus on public policies related to issues of economic inequality and social development. Specifically, she is interested in policies and programs that promote the well-being of low-income families and their communities. Dr. Michal Grinstein-Weiss is the founder and leader of the UNC Assets Research Group, UNC. She has specialized in assessing the effectiveness of individual development accounts (IDAs). Dr. Grinstein-Weiss was invited by the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services to give the opening remarks at the Senior Staff for Social Policy in Israel Podium: "New Programs to Alleviate Poverty - The Role of the Ministry of Social Affairs," held in Jerusalem, Israel. Michal's presentation, "IDAs and Asset Building in the United States: Innovation in Poverty Alleviation," Dr. Grinstein-Weiss' policy brief on IDAs was published by the Institute for Health and Social Affairs, a government affiliated think-tank in Korea. This policy brief was translated to Korean and distributed to government officers, major social work agencies, and universities throughout Korea.

http://ssw.unc.edu/about/faculty/grinstein-weiss
http://www.unc.edu/~michalgw/

 


http://www.socialworkers.org/pressroom/swMonth/2012/toolkit/poverty/research.asp
1/3/2013
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