Biography

Clancy Blair, PhD is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology in Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He earned a BA at McGill University and an MPH in maternal and child health, and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has been conducting research on self-regulation in children for over two decades with a specific focus on the development of executive functions. This research has demonstrated that executive functions are central to school readiness and school achievement, are substantially influenced by experience and the characteristics of the family and home environment, and highly interrelated with the regulation of stress response physiology. An important focus of this research is on the ways in which experience ‘gets under the skin’ to influence the development of executive functions through effects on stress physiology. This mechanism is one that appears to be particularly relevant to the effect of poverty on children’s development and may be one primary route through which childhood poverty exerts long-term influence on cognitive and social-emotional development into adulthood.

Greg Duncan holds the title of Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Duncan received his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan and spent the first 35 years of his career at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. Duncan’s recent work has focused on estimating the role of school-entry skills and behaviors on later school achievement and attainment and the effects of increasing income inequality on schools and children’s life chances. Duncan was President of the Population Association of America in 2008 and the Society for Research in Child Development between 2009 and 2011. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and was awarded the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in 2013. In 2015, he received SRCD's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy and Practice in Child Development.

Gary W. Evans, the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology, Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and of Human Development, Cornell University is an environmental and developmental psychologist. Evans' scholarship is focused on the physical environment (environmental stressors, cumulative risk, chaos, housing, schools) in child well-being. Much of his work is focused on the environment of childhood poverty. An award winning teacher, Evans has lectured in over 40 countries and is the author of more than 300 scholarly articles and five books. He is a scientific advisor to the WHO on children’s environmental health, previously served on the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academy of Sciences, the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, CDC, and was a member of the Mac Arthur Foundation Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health. Professor Evans is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University.

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Columbia University’s Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. She also co-directs the National Center for Children and Families, a center devoted to research, policy, and practice. Brooks-Gunn’s specialty is policy-oriented research focusing on family and community influences upon the development of children and youth. She also designs and evaluates interventions aimed at enhancing the lives of children and youth, including home visiting programs for pregnant women and new mothers, early childhood education programs for toddlers and preschoolers, two generation programs for young children and their parents, and after-school programs for older children. Dr. Brooks-Gunn has been the recipient of several honors: the Harvard University Graduate School of Education Alumni Council Award, election into the National Academy of Education, election into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies; Honorary Doctorate of Science at Northwestern University; Distinguished Contributions to the Public Policy for Children Award from the Society for Research in Child Development; Margaret Mead Fellow Award by the American Academy of Political and Social Science; James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society; Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy Award from the American Psychological Association; and the John P. Hill Award for excellence in theory development and research on adolescents from the Society for Research on Adolescence.

1-151 - Developmental Effects of Early Exposure to Poverty

Session Type: Invited SRCD Salon

Sub Unit

• Invited Program on Poverty, Inequality & Developmental Science

Moderator

• Clancy B. Blair, New York University

Panelists

• Greg J. Duncan, University of California - Irvine

• Gary W. Evans, Cornell University

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Teachers College, Columbia University