Scholars

Susan E. Mayer is dean and associate professor at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the College at the University of Chicago and is the past director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. She also serves as a faculty affiliate with the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy.

Her current research is on the effect of economic mobility across generations and the role of noncognitive skills on social and economic success. She was a research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies at Northwestern University before joining the faculty of the Harris School in 1989. Mayer is the author of several articles and book chapters on the measurement of poverty, the consequences for poor children when growing up in poor neighborhoods, the effect of income on children's well-being, and the social and political consequences of economic inequality and segregation.

She is the author of:

• What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances;
• Coeditor of Earning and Learning: How Schools Matter (with P. Peterson).

Mayer received her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in 1986.