About the Center

Understanding poverty, shaping the future of poverty research.

We focus on facilitating research using a diverse set of approaches across academic disciplines to answer critical questions about poverty and its solutions.

The Center has four primary poverty-related research themes: 

• Labor Markets and Poverty
• The Non-cash Safety Net (including education and health policies)
• Children and Intergenerational Mobility
• Immigration and Poverty

Center Activities:

• State-of-the-art interdisciplinary research and training opportunities
• Conferences and seminars featuring renowned poverty scholars
• Dissemination activities that bring Center research studies to the widest possible audience of policy-makers and stakeholders at state and national levels
• A visiting scholar and visiting graduate student program designed to expand the network of poverty researchers beyond the UCD campus
• An extramural grant program aimed at mentoring a new generation of scholars
• An interdisciplinary course on Poverty and Public Policy for graduate students and advanced undergraduates
• Freshman seminars that promote understanding of and critical thinking about the complex nature of poverty in America

The Center engages faculty research affiliates in the departments of Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, Agricultural Economics, Human and Community Development, Chicano Studies, and the Schools of Education, Engineering, and Law.

The Center was founded in September 2011 with core funding from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  It is one of three federally designated Poverty Research Centers whose mission is to facilitate non-partisan academic research in the United States. The other poverty centers are the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality.

The Center is located at the University of California, Davis and is led by a Director, Deputy Director, and Executive Committee consisting of UC Davis faculty, along with a National Advisory Board consisting of nationally known poverty scholars. There are two staff positions supporting the Center, a Manager and Program Assistant.

Funding for Research

Funding for our research projects are made possible by HHS.  If you have received funding from the Center for Poverty Research, please include this language: “Funding for this project was made possible in part by grant number 1H79AE000100-1 to the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Analysis (ASPE), which was awarded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services.”