STEVEN RAPHAEL, University of California-Berkeley
I am honored to have been nominated to serve on the APPAM Policy Council. I have been attending the annual APPAM meetings since 1997, have served on the Program Committee several times in the past, and am an appointed member of the Committee on the Fall Research Conference charged with enhancing the long-term success of the meetings. I have always considered APPAM, its members, and the Fall Conference to be at the core of my research agenda and my most valued connection to colleagues across the country. I am currently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley. My disciplinary training is in labor economics and my primary teaching responsibilities at the Goldman School are courses in microeconomic theory for policy analysis, econometric modeling, and labor economics. Over the course of my career, my research has focused largely on various aspects of poverty, the economics of low-wage labor markets, housing, the economics of crime, and corrections policy. Some of the topics that I have written on include the determinants of homelessness, the labor market effects of racial segregation, discrimination in labor markets, evaluations of workforce development programs and the impact of several social insurance interventions such as the SCHIP program and workers compensation insurance. My most recent research has focused on understanding the effects of the quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate during the latter third of the 20th century on such outcomes as the employment prospects of former inmates, racial inequality, the spread of infectious disease, and crime rates. I am also actively engaged in research on various topics pertaining to the impact of immigration on receiving and sending nations.