Signe-Mary McKernan is an economist with more than 15 years’ experience researching access to assets and credit for the poor and the impact of welfare programs on the poor. She leads the Urban Institute’s Opportunity and Ownership Project. Prior to joining the Urban Institute in 1999, she worked at the Federal Trade Commission, where she was the lead economist on credit issues. She has also been a visiting professor at Georgetown University (teaching econometrics) and is currently an adjunct professor there. She has extensive experience using rigorous econometric methods and large databases, such as the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Her research has been published in books, policy briefs, reports, and more than 14 journal articles and working papers, and been presented at more than 45 professional conferences and seminars. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Brown University and her B.A. in mathematical economics and Scandinavian literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Sherraden is Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and founding director of the Center for Social Development (CSD) at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis. His first book on asset-based policy, Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy (M. E. Sharpe, 1991), proposes universal and progressive saving beginning at birth in individual development accounts (IDAs). IDAs targeted toward low-income adults have been implemented in more than 40 states and have been a focus of CSD research. Universal asset-based policies are discussed in a volume edited by Sherraden, Inclusion in the American Dream: Assets, Poverty, and Public Policy (Oxford University Press, 2005). CSD research and policy design in this area has influenced policies and programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, China, Korea, Uganda, Peru, Hungary, and other countries.
