Webcast Archives

More than one in ten children in the United States live in poverty. There are two main programs aimed at helping them and their families: the earned income tax credit, and food stamps. Hilary Hoynes studies these programs and other aspects of the social safety net at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. She has gone through decades of research to find that these programs act as an investment, improving the lives of the children who benefit from them for decades to come.

America is more politically polarized now than at almost any other time in our history. Dean Henry E. Brady of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy is studying that polarization and what, if anything, can be done to reverse it. He explains how changing political priorities, technology, and partisan media have all played a role in bringing us to a point where Republicans and Democrats don't even want their children to marry people from the other party.

The COVID-19 pandemic is confronting every level of the U.S. economy with an unprecedented challenge, and the government must mount a sustained, ambitious economic response lasting months and perhaps years, UC Berkeley economists said in an online forum today.

In the latest event in the Berkeley Conversations: COVID-19 series, some of the nation’s leading economists and policy experts said the effort will require expansive additional measures to relieve workers, state governments and businesses. And they agreed that the recovery program must focus on workers and communities of color who are bearing the brunt of the crisis.