Special Seminars in Social Service Systems

This doctoral seminar will engage us in a study of economic inequality in the United States.  More specifically, it will explore: (1) definitions and theories of economic inequality, (2) social science evidence related to the presence of extreme inequality in the United States, (3) implications of extreme inequality for individual, community and national well-being, and (4) evidence-driven proposals for addressing economic inequality, as well as the potential pros and cons of such proposals.  Extreme economic inequality is one of twelve grand challenges identified by the Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare.  It is related to each of the other grand challenges, and in many ways is a central challenge to the social work endeavor.  

Our work will include a range of readings from social work and from social science, including work from anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology, as well as other disciplines. We will examine definitions and theories that have emerged from the social sciences and guided policy. We will explore research that supports, refutes, or expands upon such theoretical approaches.

We will also examine policy and practice briefs that provide proposals for future actions, accounts of social experiments, evaluation of such trials, and their relationship to the theories and research which we have explored. Such ideas might include a guaranteed minimum income, a universal child allowance, transformation of asset-building resources, and state-supported health and human services. Our readings will include some foundational work on poverty theory and policy, descriptions of research and practice, drawing on a range of approaches, and some accounts of the excitement and frustrations of dealing with contradictory approaches and findings. In the course of this work we will explore the ways in which theories inform popular beliefs about policy and practice.

Our seminar will host frequent guest speakers who are active in this area and represent a range of approaches and discoveries. Seminar participants will also have the opportunity to examine their own research areas in the context of work on economic inequality. Students will write frequent brief analytic pieces reflecting readings, discussion, and the intersections with their own work. They will participate in class and in the interactive web site that will be established for the class. They will make brief in-class presentations as assigned related to their analyses. There will be a final paper synthesizing what they have learned throughout the semester and drawing implications for a future research agenda.