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Concentrated Poverty: What, Where and Why
July 12, 2006
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

This policy forum aims to raise awareness and stimulate meaningful dialogue about concentrated poverty in our region. Two prominent experts in the field, Paul A. Jargowsky and Marcus Martin, will share their insights, identify opportunities for investment and partnerships, and discuss relevant public policy.

Jargowsky is associate professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. His principal research interests are inequality, geographic concentration of poverty, and residential segregation by race and class. He is known for his award-winning book Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City.

Martin is the director of the J. McDonald Williams Institute, the research arm of the Foundation for Community Empowerment, where he leads efforts in Dallas to measure and reduce disparities in economic opportunity. He has teaching and research experience in the areas of social epidemiology, social stratification, criminology, race relations, and statistics and research methods.

Agenda

Registration
Welcome
Alfreda B. Norman
Assistant Vice President and Community Affairs Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Concentration of Poverty and Metropolitan Development
Paul Jargowsky
Associate Professor of Political Economy, University of Texas at Dallas
Presentation
The Cost of Not Addressing Concentrated Poverty: How Much Can Dallas Afford to Pay?
Marcus Martin
Director, J. McDonald Williams Institute, Foundation for Community Empowerment
Presentation
Questions and Answers

Speaker Bios

Paul A. Jargowsky is an associate professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. His principal research interests are inequality, the geographic concentration of poverty, and residential segregation by race and class. Other areas of interest include educational attainment and economic mobility. His book Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City is a comprehensive examination of poverty at the neighborhood level in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1970 and 1990. The Urban Affairs Association named Poverty and Place the "Best Book in Urban Affairs Published in 1997 or 1998."

Jargowsky has been involved in policy development at both the state and federal levels. In 1993, he was a visiting scholar at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he helped design the simulation model used for welfare reform planning. In 1986, he was the project director for the New York State Task Force on Poverty and Welfare Reform. The Task Force's report, "The New Social Contract: Rethinking the Nature and Purpose of Public Assistance," was influential in reshaping the welfare reform debate. Jargowsky has also been involved as a consultant and expert witness in fair housing and school desegregation litigation.

Jargowsky teaches courses on economics, sociology, social policy and empirical methods. He is director of the Bruton Center for Development Studies, which conducts basic and applied research on the trends and public policies related to urban and regional development. He also is the director of the Texas Schools Project, which uses administrative data from Texas public schools and colleges to study issues in education. He was recently elected to a three-year term on the policy council of the American Sociological Association's Section on Community and Urban Sociology.

Jargowsky earned an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.P.P. from John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

Marcus Martin is the director of the J. McDonald Williams Institute, the research arm of the Foundation for Community Empowerment in Dallas. He is also an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, where he was named the 2004–05 Student Public Health Association Outstanding Faculty Member.

Previously, Martin was the biostatistician for the Tarrant County Health Department. He has also worked as an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests are in the areas of social epidemiology, residential segregation and economic mobility.

Martin received a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in criminal justice from Northeast Louisiana University, followed by a Ph.D in applied statistics and urban sociology from Howard University and an M.P.H. in epidemiology and community health from the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.