Creating an Opportunity Society

Ron Haskins is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, codirector of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings, and a senior consultant at the Annie E.Casey Foundation. He was an adviser to President George W. Bush for welfare policy and a senior staff member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he helped write legislation on social policy. He is the author of Work Over Welfare:The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (Brookings, 2007) and coeditor with Rebecca Blank of The New World of Welfare (Brookings, 2001).Isabel Sawhill is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where she holds the Cabot Family Chair and serves as codirector of the Center on Children and Families. She previously served as an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget. From 2003 to 2006, she was vice president and director of Economic Studies at Brookings. She is the editor of One Percent for the Kids: New Policies, Brighter Futures for America's Children (Brookings, 2003), coeditor with Alice Rivlin of Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005 (Brookings, 2005), and coauthor with Rudolph G. Penner and Timothy Taylor of Updating America's Social Contract (Norton, 2000).