Kathryn Edin

A renowned sociologist whose pathbreaking ethnographies--Making Ends Meet (1997), Promises I Can Keep (2005) and Doing the Best I Can (2013)--have changed understanding about the lives of the urban poor. Edin's recent books connect insights from qualitative interviews to findings from randomized experiments, Coming of Age in the Other America (2016) and to quantitative analyses of national data sets, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015). The broad reach of Edin's multi-method scholarship not only pushes the research frontiers about poverty and social policies, but also addresses myriad ways to strengthen the social safety net.