Event Summary
On September 11, AEI’s Scott Winship gathered distinguished experts to launch the new edited volume Doing Right by Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity, a call to increase opportunity and upward mobility for children from poor families.
The first panel focused on the importance of place. Panelists discussed how to contextualize violent crime, trends in geographic inequality, and the need to promote economically diverse neighborhoods through housing reform.
The second panel discussed family policy and the safety net. AEI’s Brad Wilcox argued that marriage matters today more than ever, the Manhattan Institute’s Kay S. Hymowitz advocated for increased workforce and apprenticeship training for working-class men, and AEI’s Matt Weidinger described some of the safety net’s perverse incentives and how federal policy can encourage work and upward mobility.
The final panel tackled education policy from early childhood through higher education. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Chester E. Finn Jr. described the lack of a coherent education policy beyond universalism and student loan forgiveness, the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Martin West spoke about the importance of public school reform and properly assessing student outcomes, and AEI’s Beth Akers addressed the absence of accountability and some of the cultural issues surrounding higher education.
The event concluded with a Q&A.
—Tim Sprunt
Event Decription
Material hardship among American children has never been lower. Yet children born to the most disadvantaged parents today are just as likely as they were in the past to become the most disadvantaged adults when they grow up.
In a new edited volume, Doing Right Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity, leading scholars diagnose problems of unequal opportunity and describe how conservative policy can promote the American Dream by strengthening the relationships of children and adolescents and the institutions they are connected to.
Please join us for a conversation with the volume’s authors and outside experts as they discuss place-based policies and safe communities, family policy and the safety net, and education.
Submit questions to [email protected] or on Twitter with #DoingRightbyKids.
If you are unable to attend in person, a video livestream will be made available on this page.
Agenda
11:00 a.m.
Opening Remarks:
Scott Winship, Director, Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, American Enterprise Institute
11:15 a.m.
Panel I: Place-Based Policies and Safe Communities
Panelists:
Joshua Crawford, Senior Fellow, Georgia Center for Opportunity
Charles Fain Lehman, Fellow, Manhattan Institute
John Lettieri, Cofounder, Economic Innovation Group
Moderator:
Ryan Streeter, Executive Director, Civitas Institute
12:15 a.m.
Q&A
12:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:00 p.m.
Panel II: The Family and the Safety Net
Panelists:
Kay S. Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Matt Weidinger, Rowe Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Brad Wilcox, Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Moderator:
Kevin Corinth, Deputy Director, Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, American Enterprise Institute
2:00 p.m.
Q&A
2:15 p.m.
Panel III: Early Childhood, K–12, and Higher Education
Panelists:
Beth Akers, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Chester E. Finn Jr., President Emeritus, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Martin West, Henry Less Shattuck Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Moderator:
Yuval Levin, Director, Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies, American Enterprise Institute
3:15 p.m.
Q&A
3:30 p.m.
Adjournment