Transcript
Ron Haskins: Well, good afternoon. My name is Ron Haskins. I'm a senior fellow here at Brookings and also employed at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. I'd like to welcome you to, I think this is our third or fourth annual rendition of interpreting the Census Bureau data on poverty and income and health insurance coverage. That's what we're here to discuss.
In particular we're going to do two things. First, I'm going to describe the data. I get the easy job of just describing the data and putting it in a slight historical context. And then we've invited four very distinguished panelists to tell us what it all means. And more specifically, to my immediate right--this is the first time that I'm familiar with that Joe has actually been on my right--is Joe Jones, who is the head of the Center for Fathers, Families, and Workforce Development in Baltimore, Maryland. Many of you may know him. Joe is now in the midst, in addition to running a number of training programs for low-income fathers, also Joe is just initiating a project on marriage as part of ACF, the Administration for Children and Families marriage initiative.
Next is Kathleen Cooper, who was recently the number two person at the Commerce Department and was responsible for, among many other things, the U.S. Census Bureau. So it makes some sense that she would be here to day to tell us about what she thinks the Census Bureau number means. And she'll be especially able to do that because she's left the Census Bureau, so now the overs there cannot tell her what she can say and what she can't say. So we're looking forward to frank remarks from her.
And then, of course, next is Gary Burtless. I believe Gary is the only person other than me who's been here every year that we have done this. We're very thankful to have Gary. He's a labor economist here at the Brookings Institution.
And then finally we have Doug Besharov, on the far right. Doug is the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Many of you probably already know that Doug always has something interesting and slightly off-color to say, so we're looking forward to Doug Besharov's remarks.
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