Institute for Research on Poverty selected as national research hub
Officials from the federal Economic Research Service have chosen the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty to be a national center for research on nutrition assistance programs.
The new and unique center, called the RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research, will serve as a nationwide hub for sponsoring innovative research related to such programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, and as a center for training and mentoring scholars.
Since the start of the economic recession, food-stamp use has exploded, and benefits are reaching new populations that haven’t relied on them before. Nearly 38 million people — one in eight Americans and one in four children — received food stamps in October, up 22 percent from a year earlier, and the numbers continue to rise. In 2010 it is estimated that $60 billion will be spent on this program alone.
“There has been an unprecedented increase in the use of food stamps, and at the same time, there have been dramatic increases in kids eating free or subsidized school meals,” says Judith Bartfeld, a professor in UW–Madison’s Department of Consumer Science and director of the new center. “Food assistance programs are taking on a phenomenally important role in serving as a safety net.”
The Institute for Research on Poverty- the nation’s first poverty research center — was founded in 1966 to study why Americans live in poverty and what can be done to end it. From 1999-2009, the institute was one of five institutions sponsoring food assistance research for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, as part of the Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Program.
The program is now being consolidated into two centers, one focusing on national research studies that will be housed in the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW–Madison, and another focusing on targeted studies, to be housed at the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University.
By establishing the RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research, the institute will continue its long tradition of conducting policy-relevant research, training and mentoring the next generation of poverty scholars, and broadly disseminating its findings, with a renewed emphasis on food assistance research.
The institute plans to fund innovative outside food assistance research projects, train graduate students in such research, host a visiting scholar and an annual conference, and incorporate a greater food assistance focus into a variety of ongoing initiatives.
“We are the prime national center for coordinating this kind of research, and it is nice to be recognized as such,” says Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and professor in UW–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. Smeeding will be associate director of the nutrition research center. “We’re looking forward to leading the nation in this vitally important area, as food assistance research will take on added emphasis as one of our focal research areas.”
