The 1996 Welfare Reform and Its Impact Today

Ron Haskins

Ron Haskins is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. He also serves as senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. At Brookings and Casey, his areas of expertise include welfare reform, child care, child support enforcement, child protection, and economic inequality. From February to December of 2002 he was the senior advisor to the President for Welfare Policy at the White House. Prior to joining Brookings and Casey, he spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff, then as the subcommittee’s staff director. From 1981 to 1985, he was a senior researcher at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. He also taught and lectured on history and education at UNC, Charlotte and taught developmental psychology at Duke University. He is the author of Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law, and a senior editor of The Future of Children, a journal on policy issues that affect children and families. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history, a master’s degree in education, and a doctorate in developmental psychology, all from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Mitch Pearlstein

Mitch Pearlstein is founder and president of the Center of the American Experiment, a nonpartisan, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free market ideas to bear on state and national problems. Dr. Pearlstein served for more than two years in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan and (first) Bush administrations, where he held positions including director of outreach for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Prior to his work in Washington, Dr. Pearlstein spent four years as an editorial writer and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he focused on foreign and national affairs. He also worked in the Office of Minnesota Governor Al Quie as special assistant for policy and communications and as a research fellow at the Humphrey School. He earned a doctorate degree in educational administration at the University of Minnesota, with an emphasis on higher education policy.