Jacob Hacker
Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science and Director at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University.
to the American dream.
Jacob Hacker is an important contributor of public policy ideas in the areas of healthcare, social welfare and economic opportunity. Jacob has spent his career researching how the institutions of social protection work, practically and economically.
Professor Hacker’s new book (with Paul Pierson) is on inequality and American politics, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Hacker and Pierson’s groundbreaking work identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time—the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.
In his book, The Great Risk Shift, in an updated edition with a new subtitle: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, Jacob Hacker describes how government and businesses are shifting risk of all kinds—job and income security, healthcare, and retirement—onto the shoulders of individuals and families.
The Great Risk Shift is an indispensable message for any audience that helps people manage financial risk, including those in healthcare, human resources, financial services and, especially, insurance; plus policymakers and organizations intent on restoring security to the American dream.
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Jacob is also the author of Health Care for America, a proposal for guaranteed, affordable health care for all Americans sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, which is the foundation for President Obama's healthcare plan, and he co-edited Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System—and How to Heal It.
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Professor Hacker’s scholarly articles have appeared in such outlets as The American Political Science Review, The British Journal of Political Science, Health Affairs, The New England Journal of Medicine, Perspectives on Politics; Politics & Society, Studies in American Political Development, and The Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law.
The Institutions of Social Protection
Jacob has spent his career researching how the institutions of social protection work, practically and economically. He is the author of two books in this area besides The Great Risk Shift – The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security, and The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. He oversees a Social Science Research Council project on the privatization of risk and is Vice-President of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Research Areas
The politics of U.S. social policy
American political development
The comparative political economy of the welfare state
Current Work
Professor Hacker recently completed a book with Paul Pierson on inequality and American politics, Winner-Take-All Politics. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he is also developing a new index of economic security and overseeing a new public opinion survey on perceptions of economic insecurity in the United States.
Topic
Why Elections and This Election Matter
Books
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (coauthor Paul Pierson, September 2010)
Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System—and How to Heal It (editor).
The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement—And How You Can Fight Back (Oxford University Press, October 2006)
Transforming America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (Joe Soss, Suzanne Mettler, co-editors; Russell Sage Foundation Publications, November 2007)
Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (with Paul Pierson); (hardcover, Yale University Press, 2005; paperback, September 2006).
The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge, 2002); as a dissertation, received prizes from the American Political Science Association, the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security (Princeton University Press, 1997); co-winner of the 1997 Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration
Credentials
- Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University
- Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies
- Fellow, New American Foundation
- Former Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
- Formerly, Peter Strauss Family Professor of Political Science, Yale University
- Former Resident Fellow, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale
- Member, Task Force on Inequality and Democracy, American Political Science Association
- Author of four books and of Health Care for America; editor of Health at Risk
- Co-chair, National Academy of Social Insurance conference 2007
- Former Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows
- Former Guest Scholar and Research Fellow, the Brookings Institution
- Co-winner, Louis Brownlow Book Award, National Academy of Public Administration (The Road to Nowhere)
- Dissertation prizes from the American Political Science Association, the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the National Academy of Social Insurance