Lawrence Mead

Lawrence Mead is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at New York University, where he teaches public policy and American government.  He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin.  He has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. 

Professor Mead is an expert on the problems of poverty and welfare in the United States.  Among academics, he was the principal exponent of work requirements in welfare, the approach that now dominates national policy.  He is also a leading scholar of the politics and implementation of welfare reform programs.  He has written seven books and over a hundred other publications on these subjects. These works have helped shape welfare reform in the United States and abroad. 

Government Matters, his study of welfare reform inWisconsin_,_ was a co-winner of the 2005 Louis Brownlow Book Award, given by the National Academy of Public Administration.  More recently, he has also written and lectured on the sources of American primacy in the world.

Professor Mead has consulted with federal, state, and local governments in this country and with several foreign countries.  He testifies regularly to Congress on poverty, welfare, and social policy, and he often comments on these subjects in the media.

He is a native of Huntington, New York, and a graduate of Amherst College.  He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. 

Areas of Expertise

City Management