Policy thought leader on restoring security
to the American dream.

Highlights

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.

In his most recent book, The Great Risk Shift, 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.

Professor Hacker is completing a book with Paul Pierson on inequality and American politics, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (due Sept. 2010).

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.

Jacob Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, and a Resident Fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He heads a Social Science Research Council project on the privatization of risk. He is a Fellow at the New America Foundation and sits on the American Political Science Association's public presence Task Force on Inequality and Democracy.

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 is completing 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, forthcoming, 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
• Resident Fellow at the 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