Roll’s research focuses on promoting asset building, debt management, and economic security in lower-income populations. Working within the Center for Social Development, where he is the director of research, he is involved in research on cash transfers, child savings, and the role of public and employer-based benefits programs in promoting (or harming) economic and social mobility. Roll serves as a co-lead of the Grand Challenges for Social Work Network to Reduce Extreme Economic Inequality.
His most recent work focuses on the role of cash transfer programs in improving household balance sheets and economic mobility outcomes, which includes studies of the Expanded Child Tax Credit and six guaranteed income experiments in Georgia, North Carolina and Missouri. He is also leading a 10-year study evaluating the impact of investing $5,000 on behalf of 300 low-income 7th graders in St. Louis.
There is still time for the government to act to make Trump Accounts a successful driver of generational wealth for American families, write Jin Huang and Stephen Roll.
Jin Huang, Irving Louis Horowitz Professor of social policy at the Brown School and co-director of the Center for Social Development; and Stephen Roll, assistant professor in the Brown School and research director for the center
Researchers at the Center for Social Development in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis are launching a new initiative to help shape the future of wealth-building policy in the United States, with a focus on giving children stronger financial foundations that can last a lifetime.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis argues that policymakers should enact gradual cutoffs for public benefits such as food assistance or healthcare. The change could help both families and employers by allowing low-wage workers to earn more without losing critical support systems.
A guaranteed income program for artists led to improvement in financial stability and reduced debt, but also improved their motivation and artistic output, finds a new study from the WashU Brown School.
Guaranteed income programs may reduce food insecurity and improve nutrition among low-income Black households in Georgia, according to a new study led by the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Using a “check-the-box” opt-in process to open federally funded Trump Accounts for children will likely exclude millions of eligible families — and undermine the program’s promise to promote lifelong asset building, finds a new policy brief from the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis.
