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IRP, at the UW-Madison, is a center for interdisciplinary research into the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequality in the United States. As one of three National Poverty Research Centers sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, IRP has a particular interest in poverty and family welfare in Wisconsin as well as the nation.

Previous New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminars

W. Thomas Boyce, Sunny Hill Health Center-BC Leadership Chair in Child Development in the Human Early Learning Partnership and the Center for Community Child Health Research, Co-Director of Child and Family Research Institute's (CFRI) Experience-Based Brain and Biological Development Program, Scientist Level 3, CFRI, and Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies and Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, delivered the 2011–2012 lecture "A Biology of Misfortune: How Social Stratification, Sensitivity, and Stress Diminish Early Health and Development," February 8, 2012.

Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Director of ideas42, a laboratory for applied behavioral economics at Harvard, and a founding member of the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the 2010–2011 lecture “Economic Stability Precedes Economic Mobility: Psychic Consequences of Economic Instability,” September 21, 2010.

Richard C. Longworth, Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar, DePaul University, and author of the book Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2007), delivered the 2009–2010 lecture "Caught in the Middle," May 4, 2010. Donald Nichols, Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Economics, UW–Madison, served as the respondent.

Charles Karelis, Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University, and author of the book The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor (Yale University Press, 2007), delivered the 2007–2008 lecture "The Persistence of Poverty," April 3, 2008. Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW–Madison, served as the respondent.

Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory Law School, and Director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, delivered the second lecture, "The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency," October 19, 2006. Joe Soss, now Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and IRP Affiliate, responded to Fineman’s talk.

Charles Murray, W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered the first New Perspectives in Social Policy lecture, "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State," May 5, 2006. Robert Haveman, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, and IRP Affiliate, UW–Madison, responded to Murray’s talk.