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The Institute for Policy Research
Panelists and Presentations
Color Matters: Racial Disparities in the Child Welfare System by Dorothy Roberts. Roberts writes and lectures on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, motherhood, families, and communities. She has studied the racial disparity in state removal of children from their homes, the impact of the child welfare system on black families, and how racial politics shapes child welfare policy. Roberts will speak on her current research investigating the extraordinarily high rates of involvement by public child welfare agencies in African American communities. In particular, she focuses on the impact that such disproportionate representation has on African Americans’ attitudes towards their community and civic life. Roberts is Kirkland and Ellis Professor, School of Law and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.
Rethinking Our Public Education System for Young Children: A New Model for Prekindergarten Through Grade 3 by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale. A developmental psychologist, Chase-Lansdale specializes in multidisciplinary research on social issues and their affects on families and children. A particular focus involves examining how low-income children and youth “defy the odds” to achieve school success. She is the lead author on “Mothers’ Transitions from Welfare to Work and the Well-Being of Preschoolers and Adolescents” (Science, 2003), emanating from Welfare Reform and Children: A Three-City Study. As chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Child Development, she has been involved with its push to highlight the need for reform in PK-3 education to improve educational achievements of low-income children. She will present the foundation’s model and discuss states that are implementing it. Chase-Lansdale is professor of human development and social policy, School of Education and Social Policy, and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Causes and Consequences of Childhood Obesity by Kristin Butcher. Butcher is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As a member of the microeconomic team, she conducts research on labor economics, immigration policy, and health economics, with a particular interest in maternal employment and childhood obesity. She is currently working on research showing how schools, often citing financial pressures, have given students greater access to junk food and soda pop to fund school programs and how these affect their health. She will discuss the changes in children’s lives that have led to the tripling of childhood obesity rates since 1980 and their effects. Butcher was a program officer in human and community development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation before joining the Chicago Federal Reserve in 2002. For more information, contact Patricia Reese at 847-491-8712.
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