In the News
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James Ziliak selected as Rebecca Blank Fellow
James Ziliak, UKCPR director and Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics, was selected by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to be the 2025 Rebecca Blank Fellow.
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Robert Moffitt honored in special issue of Journal of Labor Economics
Robert Moffitt, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University and UKCPR research affiliate, was honored in April 2025 with a special issue of the Journal of Labor Economics dedicated to his r
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Elizabeth Krause receives grant from Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy
Elizabeth Krause, a PhD student in Economics and UKCPR graduate student research fellow, received a grant from the highly selective Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Mission Statement
The University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research (UKCPR) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit academic research center established in 2002. Our research informs evidence-based policy on the causes, consequences, and correlates of poverty, inequality, and food insecurity in the United States.
UKCPR is a member of the Collaborative of Poverty Centers sponsored by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with underwriting from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The other member poverty centers are located at Columbia University, Howard University, Stanford University, University of California-Davis, University of California-Irvine, University of Michigan, and University of Washington. The goal of the CPC is to improve the effectiveness of public policies to reduce poverty and inequality and their impacts on the well-being of the American people.
Spotlight
Eleanor joined the department in the fall of 2024 after completing her Ph.D. in Public Policy at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Her research applies the insights and methods from public, labor, and urban economics to study questions related to the environment, economic opportunity, and geographic inequality. Much of her current work explores the distributional and labor market consequences of the clean energy transition, including applications to the Appalachian region. She is a current recipient of an Early Career Award from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Eleanor worked in the Economic Studies Program at The Brookings Institution and the U.S. Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute.
Read more about Eleanor on her faculty page.