IDEAS

Research resources

:: Harvard centers and programs

:: Harvard academic departments

:: Blogs from our fellows

:: Academic research centers elsewhere

:: Policy research organizations

:: Data sources

 

HARVARD CENTERS AND PROGRAMS

Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy
Home to the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Through research and education, the Malcolm Wiener Center strives to improve public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, inequality, education, and labor.

The Achievement Gap Initiative
The Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) is a university-wide effort initiated by the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to focus academic research, public education, and innovative outreach activities toward eliminating achievement gaps.

Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)
Led by an interdisciplinary group of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and historians at Harvard University, the Center for American Political Studies fosters discussion, research, public outreach, and pedagogy about all aspects of modern U.S. politics.

Ed Labs - The Education Innovation Laboratory
Transforming education through the power of the scientific method. EdLabs is an education research and development laboratory devoted to closing the achievement gap.

Joint Center for Housing Studies
Harvard University's center for information and research on housing in the United States.

Migration and Immigrant Incorporation Workshop
Home to a broad range of interests under the general rubric of immigration studies. Designed primarily to circulate academic works in progress among its doctoral student and faculty participants.

Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies is dedicated to fostering the study of European history, politics, and society at Harvard.

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management
The Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management (PCJ) at the Harvard Kennedy School aims to enable governments to fulfill their obligations to ensure public safety and justice. PCJ does this through research, instruction and curriculum development, and the maintenance of long-lasting partnerships with practitioners and other scholars.

Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG)
Established in 1996 under the direction of Paul E. Peterson, PEPG is dedicated to the systematic analysis of education policy and governing arrangements.

Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston
Strives to "improve the governance of Greater Boston by fostering better connections between the region's scholars, policymakers, and civic leaders."

Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America
The Saguaro Seminar "strives to develop a handful of far-reaching, actionable ideas to significantly increase Americans' connectedness to one another and to community institutions."

The Taubman Center for State and Local Government
The Kennedy School of Government's "focal point for activities that address state and local governance and intergovernmental relations."

W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research is the nation's oldest research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social institutions of Africans and African Americans. 

Women and Public Policy Program
The Women and Public Policy Program aims to incorporate "an understanding of gender perspectives on public policy" and to "contribute to the canon of scholarship on women and public policy."

 

HARVARD Ph.D. DEPARTMENTS | PROGRAMS

Department of Economics
Harvard University's Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Department of Government
Harvard University's program for the study of political science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Ph.D. Program in Political Economy & Government
Intended for scholars interested in academic or policymaking careers requiring advanced knowledge of both economics and political science.

Ph.D. Program in Public Policy
Prepares candidates to shape the direction of public policy research and to train the next generation of teachers for programs in public policy.

Department of Sociology
Harvard University's program for the study of sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Ph.D. Programs in Social Policy
Combining the disciplinary depth of a Ph.D in political science or sociology with the multidisciplinary study social policy. Links the departments of Government and Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with the Social Policy faculty at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

 

BLOGS FROM OUR FELLOWS

Inequalities
Research and reflection from both sides of the Atlantic

I Heart Taxes
Welcome to I Heart Taxes, home of the proud taxpayer. We know that taxes do great things, like build roads and schools, pay our firefighters, and keep our air clean and our water safe.

 

ACADEMIC RESEARCH CENTERS ELSEWHERE

Bendheim Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW)
Princeton University

Center for the Study of Inequality (CSI)
Cornell University

Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University

Institute for Research on Poverty
University of Wisconsin-Madison

National Poverty Center
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

Office of Population Research
Princeton University

Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality
Stanford University

University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP)
University of Texas, Austin

 

POLICY RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS AND NON-PROFITS

The Brookings Institution
Washington, DC

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
Washington, DC

Economic Policy Institute
Washington, DC

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
Washington, DC

Mathematica Policy Research
Princeton, NJ; Cambridge, MA; and Washington, DC

MDRC
New York, NY, and Oakland, CA

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Cambridge, MA

The Russell Sage Foundation
New York, NY

Scholars Strategy Network (SSN)
Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC

The Urban Institute
Washington, DC

W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
Kalamazoo, MI

 

DATA SOURCES

This data guide has been updated from a version originally created by Carrie Conaway, now Deputy Director of the New England Public Policy Center, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Data source	Description
Boston Data Portal, Harvard University	The Center for Geographic Analysis with the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the IQSS, is building a proof-of-concept system called the Boston Data Portal aimed at providing both government and academic datasets.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)	Employment, unemployment, earnings, prices, compensation, productivity, technology, employment projections, international prices, foreign labor.  Much data available to download, though not all interactively.
Census Bureau	Demographics, poverty, income, housing, home ownership, state and county profiles.  Produces the Decennial Census, the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Economic Census, and the Census of Housing.  Most data are easily downloadable.
Current Population Survey (CPS)	Joint project of the BLS and Census Bureau.  Monthly survey of about 50,000 U.S. households, with some households in sample followed for up to two years.  Questions mainly deal with labor force information.  March Demographic Supplement is even more detailed.  Additional supplements available on: contingent workers and alternative employment; displaced workers; job tenure and occupational mobility; race and ethnicity; school enrollment; work experience, food security; computer ownership; and fertility and marital history.  Data are easily downloadable via Ferret.
Economic Report of the President	The appendix of the Economic Report of the President contains a number of useful statistical tables which are available for downloading from the Council of Economic Advisors.  Topics: GDP, prices, consumption, trade, personal disposable income, employment/unemployment, demographics, employment cost, productivity, money, credit, finance, national income and product accounts, corporate profits, agriculture, and international statistics.
Fedstats	One-stop shopping for federal statistical data.  Over 70 federal agencies participate.
Green Book	Produced biennially by the Department of Health and Human Services.  Contains information and statistics on many social programs, including: Social Security, Medicare, Supplemental Security Income, Unemployment Compensation, Earned Entitlement for Railroad Employees, Trade Adjustment Assistance, Aid for Families with Dependent Children / Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, child support enforcement, child care, Title XX Block Grants, child protection / foster care / adoption.  Also general data on the elderly, poverty, employment, and families.  Text and tables downloadable.
Harvard-MIT Data Center	Harvard's repository of social sciences data.  Many of the data sets listed on this page are available from them on-line.
Inter-university Consortium  for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)	Archive of all kinds of social science data, both contemporary and historical.  Harvard owns many of these data sets.
LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg	The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) is a non-profit cooperative research project with a membership that includes 25 countries on four continents: Europe, America, Asia and Oceania. The project is mainly funded by the national science and social science research foundations of its member countries. The LIS database is a collection of household income surveys. These surveys provide demographic, income and expenditure information on three different levels: household, person and child. The Luxembourg Employment Study (LES) is a parent project of LIS that was initiated in 1994. This project has been partly funded by the Human capital and Mobility Programme of the European Commission and the Norwegian Research Council. The LES database includes Labour Force Surveys from countries with quite different labour market structures. These surveys provide detailed information on areas like job search, employment characteristics, comparable occupations, investment in education, migration, etc.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)	Data and tables available on: macroeconomic trends, business cycles, industries, consumer expenditures, etc.  You can also download data sets used in some NBER publications for reanalysis.
National Longitudinal Surveys	A series of longitudinal studies conducted by the Department of Labor to collect information on the labor market experiences of people at different stages of labor market participation.  The most commonly used part of these data is the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, whose roughly 13,000 participants are nationally representative of individuals aged 14 to 22 in 1979. Not available on the web, but inexpensive CDs are available and come with a program to make compiling the data easy.
Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)	A nationally representative panel study begun in 1968 with about 5,000 individuals.  Today the sample comprises about 50,000 individuals, with information for some going back as many as 28 years.  Focuses on labor market and income information, plus some supplements on fertility, health, wealth, kinship, etc.  Data are downloadable for free on the web, along with codebooks, questionnaires, etc.
Resources for Economists	Sponsored by the American Economics Association, the guide "lists more than 2,000 resources in 97 sections and sub-sections available on the Internet of interest to academic and practicing economists, and those interested in economics."
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)	A continuous series of nationally representative panels starting in 1984 with sample sizes between 14,000 and 36,700 and durations of 2-1/2 to 4 years.  Collects information on labor force participation, income, program participation, and program eligibility.  Good for evaluating short-term trends.
Surveys Measuring Well-Being	A description of survey content and data quality/availability for selected surveys measuring children's well-being. Developed by Jeffrey Kling in connection the Moving to Opportunity demonstration program.
Statistical Abstract of the United States	Contains general data accumulated from a variety of government agencies.  Relevant topics covered include: population, health and nutrition, education, law enforcement, social insurance and human services, labor force / employment / earnings, income and wealth, foreign commerce, and industrial outlook.  Text and tables downloadable.
University of Michigan Research Guides	Compiled by the University of Michigan libraries.  Relevant topics covered include: agriculture, business and industry, cost of living, crime statistics, demographics, earnings, the economy, education, foreign trade, health, and labor.