James P. Ziliak has lent his expertise in socioeconomic well-being—particularly regarding poverty, food insecurity, tax and transfer policy, and rural issues—to the design of groundbreaking policies like the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit. He has led numerous panels to improve poverty measurement, survey quality, and data collection, and his accessible evaluations of safety-net programs are widely read by policymakers and the general public. Ziliak is founding director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research, which houses data and sponsors cross-disciplinary research on inequality, poverty, and hunger to inform evidence-based policy.
Professional positions
- 2002–present: Professor of economics, University Research Professor (2019–present) and Carol Martin Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics, University of Kentucky
- 1993–2002: Assistant (1993–1999) and associate (1999–2002) professor of economics, University of Oregon
Notable publications
- Ziliak, James P., Christopher Mackie, and Constance F. Citro, eds. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. National Academies Press.
- Jones, Maggie R., and James P. Ziliak. 2022. “The Antipoverty Impact of the EITC: New Estimates from Survey and Administrative Tax Records.” National Tax Journal 75 (3): 451–479.
- Hartley, Robert Paul, Carlos Lamarche, and James P. Ziliak. 2022. “Welfare Reform and the Intergenerational Transmission of Dependence.” Journal of Political Economy 130 (3): 523–565.
- Ziliak, James P. 2014. “Supporting Low-Income Workers Through Refundable Child-Care Credits.” In Policies to Address Poverty in America, edited by Melissa Kearney and Benjamin Harris. Hamilton Project/Brookings.
Degrees
- PhD, economics, Indiana University
- MA, economics, Indiana University
- BS, economics, Purdue University
- BA, sociology, Purdue University
In The ANNALS
- Volume 711, January 2024: “Measuring Poverty: Advances to the Supplemental Poverty Measure” (coauthored with David S. Johnson, Helen Levy, Jordan Matsudaira, and Barbara L. Wolfe)
- Volume 710, November 2023: “The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Food Insecurity and Financial Hardship” (coauthored with Nicholas Moellman and Cody N. Vaughn)
- Volume 695, May 2021: “Recent Trends in the Material Well-Being of the Working Class in America”
- Volume 686, November 2019: Entitlement Reform (coedited with Robert A. Moffitt)
- Volume 672, July 2017: “The Rural-Urban Interface: New Patterns of Spatial Interdependence and Inequality in America” (coauthored with Daniel T. Lichter)
