Jacob Hacker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jacob Stewart Hacker^[1] (born 1971) is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University and has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States.^[2] His most recent book, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, (2008 paperback) lays out the argument that America's middle class has grown more insecure over the last 30 years, as problems once confined to the working poor—loss or lack of health insurance and guaranteed pensions, job insecurity and mounting personal debt—have moved up the income ladder to become a normal part of middle-class life.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Biography 3 Personal life 4 Books published 5 References

[edit] Early life

Hacker was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon. He graduated summa cum laude in 1994 from Harvard University with a B.A. in Social Studies, and he received his Ph.D. from Yale in Political Science in 2000.^[3] His first book, The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security, was published in 1997, while he was a graduate student at Yale.

[edit] Biography

Hacker is a media contributor and has testified before the United States Congress. He was widely recognized as a contributor to the health care plans for three of the leading Democratic candidates — Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John Edwards — in the presidential election of 2008.^[4] Hacker's plan, Health Care for America, is outlined in a report for the Economic Policy Institute. It proposes providing health care for uninsured or under-insured Americans by requiring employers to either provide insurance to their workers or enroll them in a new, publicly overseen insurance pool. People in this pool could choose either a public plan modeled after Medicare or from regulated private plans.

He is a Fellow at the left-leaning New American Foundation, and in 2007 he co-chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance's conference, "For the Common Good." In 2007 he was given funding by the Rockefeller Foundation for a multi-year project to develop a comprehensive "Economic Security Index." He oversees a Social Science Research Council project on the "privatization of risk," and is also completing a book on inequality and American democracy, Winner-Take-All Politics: Inequality and the Transformation of American Politics (with Paul Pierson).

[edit] Personal life

He is married to Oona A. Hathaway, a Professor of Law at Yale University and former Supreme Court clerk to Sandra Day O'Connor.^[5]

[edit] Books published

• The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, Oxford University Press, 2006, (paperback 2008).
• Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, with Paul Pierson, Yale University Press, 2005, (paperback 2006).
• The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President's Clinton's Plan for Health Security, Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System, Columbia University Press, 2008.

[edit] References

1. David Leonhardt, The New York Times Book Review, October 29, 2006.
2. Julie Rosner and Melissa Block, NPR News, February 22, 2008.