Harvard Expert on Urban Poverty to Speak at Pitt April 8

PITTSBURGH—Kathyrn Edin, a professor of public policy and management at Harvard University, will deliver a free public lecture at noon April 8 titled “How the Urban Poor Navigate Social Space: Lessons From Chicago’s Gautreaux Mobility Program” in the University of Pittsburgh’s Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP), School of Social Work Conference Center, 20th floor, Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland. The talk is part of the Reed Smith Spring 2011 Speaker Series. Registration is not required; lunch will be provided. For more information, call 412-624-7382 or visit www.crsp.pitt.edu. 

Edin’s research focuses on urban poverty and family life, social welfare, housing, child support, and nonmarital childbearing. Her talk will refer to the Gautreaux Mobility Program, a housing desegregation project in Chicago initiated by an order from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.  The court required that the Chicago Housing Authority provide scattered Section 8 housing in the city or suburbs to hundreds of families in isolated public housing projects. 

Edin’s most recent book, Unmarried Couples With Children (Russel Sage Foundation, 2007), is an analysis of a four-year study of 50 unmarried couples who gave birth to a child in 2000. She also coauthored Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (Univ. of California Press, 2005) and Making Ends Meet: How Low Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997). 

A member of the MacArthur Network on Housing and Children, Edin received her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. She taught Northwestern, Rutgers University, and at the University of Pennsylvania prior to accepting an appointment at Harvard. 

CRSP’s annual Reed Smith Spring Speaker Series provides an opportunity for faculty, staff, students, and members of the community to engage in race-related discussions of mutual interest. 

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