Timothy M. Smeeding

About

I am Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Executive Committee member of the Center for Demography and Ecology, and the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP, which I directed from 2008-2014). I am the founder and director emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, from 1983 to 2007). I have also long been an advisor to the longitudinal cross-national equivalent file (CNEF) project since its inception in 1990. I have broad expertise in handling and analyzing large harmonized data sets across many diverse nations.

I helped found the Federal Statistical Research Data Center at UW–Madison in 2015 (WiscRDC), and have been a primary contributor to the American Opportunity Study project which, with the assistance of a National Research Council Standing Committee, seeks to link federal and state administrative datasets to surveys and evaluations to help determine the long-term impact of policy on mobility and other social outcomes

I have worked for over 25 years studying the demography and economics of income inequality, and more recently, wealth and educational inequality in cross-national context. My recent work has been on the demography of income, consumption and wealth for the same persons, mobility across generations, and inequality and poverty among families with children in a national and a cross-national context.

CDE research theme area affiliations

Demography of Inequality

Selected Publications

Hardy, Bradley, Timothy Smeeding, and James Ziliak. “The Changing Safety Net for Low-Income Parents and Their Children: Structural or Cyclical Changes in Income Support Policy?”. Demography 55, no. 1 (2018): 189-221.

Gornick, Janet, and Timothy Smeeding. “Redistributional Policy in Rich Countries: Institutions and Impacts in Nonelderly Households.” Annual Review of Sociology 44 (2018): 441-68. NIHMS ID 982823.

Shaefer, H. Luke, Sophie Collyer, Greg Duncan, Kathryn Edin, Irwin Garfinkel, David Harris, Timothy Smeeding, et al. “A Universal Child Allowance: A Plan to Reduce Poverty and Income Instability among Children in the United States.” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4, no. 2 (2018): 22-42. NIHMS ID 982832..

Smeeding, Timothy, and Celine Thevenot. “Addressing Child Poverty: How Does the United States Compare with Other Nations?” Academic Pediatrics 16, no. 3 (2016): S67-S75. PubMed Central ID 6087662.

Fisher, Jonathan, David Johnson, Jonathan Latner, Timothy Smeeding, Jeffrey Thompson. “Inequality and Mobility Using Income, Consumption, and Wealth for the Same Individuals.” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 6 (2016): 44-58. NIHMS ID 982828.

Smeeding, Timothy. “Multiple Barriers to Economic Opportunity for the “Truly” Disadvantaged and Vulnerable.” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 2 (2016): 98-122. NIHMS ID 982827.

Grusky, David, Timothy Smeeding, and Matthew Snipp. “A New Infrastructure for Monitoring Social Mobility in the United States.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 657, no. 1 (2015): 63-82. NIHMS ID 982831.

Haveman, Robert, Rebecca Blank, Robert Moffitt, Timothy Smeeding, and Geoffrey Wallace. “The War on Poverty: Measurement, Trends, and Policy.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 34 (2015): 593-638. PubMed Central ID 4822720.

Smeeding, Timothy. “Adjusting to the Fertility Bust.” Science 346, no. 6206 (2014): 163-64. PubMed Central ID. NIHMS ID 982824.

Blanden, Jo, Robert Haveman, Timothy Smeeding, and Kathryn Wilson. “Intergenerational Mobility in the United States and Great Britain: A Comparative Study of Parent-Child Pathways.” Review of Income and Wealth 60, no. 3 (2014): 425-49. NIHMS ID 982826.