Our speaker, Professor Charles Ballard will discuss poverty, with special emphasis on poverty in the United States. He will discuss problems in the measurement of poverty, and lay out the facts of poverty in America in recent decades. He will describe past political decisions that exacerbated US poverty. Finally, he will outline political and economic policies that could help eliminate poverty, and the political changes necessary for those policies to be enacted.

Charles Ballard has been on the Economics faculty at Michigan State University since 1983, when he received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 2007, he was selected as the Outstanding Teacher in MSU’s College of Social Science. He has consulted with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and with research institutes in Australia, Denmark, and Finland. His books include Michigan at the Millennium and Michigan’s Economic Future.

This is the first of a six-lecture series. The subject of the series is: Poverty, Inequity and Disparity. The next lecture will be September 17, 2020. The title is: The Questions We Don’t Know to Ask: Studying Poverty in 21st Century America.

Pre-registration is required via the OLLI website or phone. A link to access the lecture will be e-mailed to you approximately one week prior to the event.