Harry J. Holzer

Harry Holzer joined the Georgetown Public Policy Institute as Professor of Public Policy in the Fall of 2000. He served as Associate Dean from 2004 through 2006 and was Acting Dean in the Fall of 2006. He is also currently an Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, a Senior Affiliate at the Urban Institute, a Senior Affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, a National Fellow of the Program on Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard University, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Research Affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has also been a faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. He received his BA (1978) and Ph.D. (1983) from Harvard University.

Prior to coming to Georgetown, Holzer served as Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and professor of economics at Michigan State University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in 1995, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Over most of his career, Holzer's research has focused primarily on the low-wage labor market, and particularly the problems of minority workers in urban areas. In recent years he has worked on the quality of jobs as well as workers in the labor market, and how job quality affects the employment prospects of the disadvantaged as well as worker inequality and insecurity more broadly. He has also written extensively about the employment problems of disadvantaged men, advancement prospects for the working poor, and workforce policy more broadly.

His research on urban poverty and social policy has been funded by grants from the Gates Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Joyce Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Upjohn Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Mott Foundation, the MacArthur foundation and the Public Policy Institute of California.

Holzer teaches courses for MPP students in statistical methods for program and policy evaluation at the McCourt School, as well as on anti-poverty policy and on labor market policy. In his past life at Michigan State, he has taught courses in labor market policy and institutions, poverty, and introductory macroeconomics. His other interests and activities include listening to jazz and reading politics/history. His wife Deborah is a clinical social worker and they have 3 daughters, aged 24, 17 and 17.