The Researchers

The Economic Security Index (ESI), developed by political scientist Jacob Hacker and a multi-disciplinary research team with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, is designed to provide a meaningful, succinct measure of Americansl economic security. Professor Hacker is based at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, which aims to facilitate interdisciplinary inquiry in the social sciences and research into important public policy arenas. Learn more >

	Jacob S. Hacker (Ph.D., Yale University) is Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he is also a Resident Fellow of the Center for the Study of American Politics and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. An expert on the politics of U.S. health and social policy in cross-national perspective, he is the author of five books, numerous journal articles, and a wide range of popular writings on American politics and public policy, with a focus on health and economic security. Personal web page >
	Gregory A. Huber (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Resident Fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the Center for the Study of American Politics. Prior to coming to Yale, he held the Robert Hartley Fellowship in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution. His research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation, has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. His is also the author of The Craft of Bureaucratic Neutrality (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which examines the conditions under which external political actors are able to influence how bureaucratic agencies enforce the law. Personal web page >
	Philipp Rehm (Ph.D., Duke University) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University; previous posts include the Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford University. His work is located at the intersection of political economy and political behavior. In particular, he is interested in the causes and consequences of income dynamics (such as income loss, income volatility, and risk exposure). At the micro-level, his research explores how income dynamics shape individual preferences for redistribution, social policies, and parties. At the macro-level, his work analyzes the impact of labor market and income dynamics on polarization, electoral majorities, and coalitions underpinning social policy. Personal web page >
	Mark J. Schlesinger (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is Professor of Health Policy and a fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University and the most recent past editor of the Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law. His research explores the determinants of public opinion about health and social policy, the influence of bounded rationality on medical consumers, and the role of nonprofit organizations in American medicine. He has consulted to a half dozen federal agencies, several dozen state and local governments, and more than a score of nonprofit organizations. Personal web page >
	Rob Valletta (Ph.D., Harvard University) is a Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where he began working in 1995. His research concerns job security, health insurance, and econometric techniques. His employment history includes 8 years (1987-95) on the economics faculty at the University of California, Irvine and a ten-month consultancy (2000-2001) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France. The views and findings expressed in this report are those of the authors and are in no way attributable to or associated with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System. Personal web page >