Kyle Lauckner never wanted to stop being a Boy Scout. That’s why he’s working toward a career in the federal government focused on poverty alleviation.
For Lauckner, a Notre Dame junior majoring in economics and political science, both pursuits are all about service. And a new program is helping him understand how being an economist can help him continue to live out his Scout Oath “to help other people at all times.”
The evidence-based poverty alleviation concentration (EBPAC), a collaboration between the Department of Economics and the University of Notre Dame Poverty Initiative, is designed to train students in poverty research and guide them into careers addressing poverty.
“Ultimately, we’re doing this work because everybody has innate value and dignity.” - Adrienne Judson, assistant teaching professor of economics
“Scouting America cultivated my passion for civic service and being involved in my community,” said Lauckner, who’s part of EBPAC’s first cohort. “EBPAC prepares me for a job where I’m able to implement policy that really helps people’s lives.”
The concentration is one way students can get involved in the Poverty Initiative’s Poverty Research Fellows (PRF) Program, a community of students who are passionate about understanding and addressing poverty. While EBPAC is only for economics and international economics majors, PRF is available to all undergraduates.
“If we really want to make a dent on poverty in the world, we don’t just need to be doing research now,” said Adrienne Judson, assistant teaching professor of economics and director of the concentration. “We need to be equipping the next generation of people who are going to rise up and do this work in the future.”
Poverty isn’t a new problem — for hundreds of years, people have been designing programs meant to alleviate poverty, often relying on anecdotal or theoretical evidence, Judson said. But it hasn’t been until recent decades that economists and policymakers have had the statistical techniques available to conduct solid analysis of their effectiveness.
That’s why EBPAC and the Poverty Initiative as a whole are focused on building up high-quality evidence about poverty alleviation, helping governments and organizations channel resources toward programs that are actually effective.
“We don’t want to spend time talking in circles about theoretical possibilities when we have the ability to actually gather evidence and see if these programs are really helping,” Judson said.
Centering career discernment
EBPAC students take the same core classes as all economics majors, then add two required classes that form the foundation of the concentration. The first is Economics of Poverty, which defines poverty from an economic perspective and gives an overview of poverty across human history — where it happens, what policies have and haven’t been successful, and how poverty has changed.
The Economics of Poverty course is open to all students, and Lauckner took it last semester. He said he enjoyed its frequent hands-on assignments — like calculating multidimensional poverty indices and preparing policy briefs — but the key takeaway was that there’s always more to learn.
“I left thinking forward,” he said. ”I know the landscape right now, and I can go out and do something with it.”
The second core EBPAC class, Causal Inference for Poverty Alleviation, will be offered for the first time this semester. It’s an advanced statistical methods course that gives students a deeper idea of the research methods economists use to study antipoverty policies.
In addition to these two required classes, students take three poverty-related economics electives and complete three experiential learning courses. Two of those must come from enriching experience seminars, which bring in external speakers who work in various areas of poverty alleviation work. Students speak with these professionals to get a sense of what career they might want to pursue.
Students interested in fighting poverty often pursue graduate-level education within economics, law, public policy, and international affairs. Others also enter careers in nonprofit leadership, research administration, research communication, and other fields.
“Those types of jobs are not going to necessarily show up in a Google search,” Judson said. “But they do exist, and they offer a pathway into the type of meaningful work that a lot of our students are looking for.”
For their third experiential learning course, students can either take a third seminar session or sign up for one of the concentration’s immersive trips to Washington, D.C., or another location where Notre Dame’s research partners are investigating poverty. Last semester, students met with people who work on poverty-related policy on Capitol Hill, in the Supreme Court, at the Federal Reserve, and in think tanks.
Daniella Morales-Garibay is one of the students who went to D.C., and the trip made her start aiming for law school and a career in policy.
“My first year, I wasn’t quite sure how I could work in the policy area with an econ major, but being in the concentration has allowed me to understand exactly how I can do it and learn from people who have done it,” she said. “That’s been incredibly important in my journey discerning what I want to do and the topics I want to explore.”
Part of a campus-wide effort
This summer, both Morales-Garibay and Lauckner gained additional experience in poverty alleviation through PRF internships and were placed at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, where they helped assess the lab’s state and national poverty programs. The internship isn’t required for the concentration, but it’s another way students from any major can get involved in the Poverty Research Fellows Program.
There are many students who are interested in poverty alleviation but can’t join the concentration because they are not economics majors or don’t have the schedule space, Judson said. However, they can still get involved by enrolling in the Economics of Poverty course, working through internships, or participating in the Poverty Research Community.
Each semester, students in this community attend three campus events related to poverty research. Several organizations — in addition to the Poverty Initiative — host these events, creating a far-reaching, interdisciplinary set of offerings that reflects the breadth of poverty research at Notre Dame. Additionally, similar poverty research concentrations will launch in additional majors, starting with other social science disciplines.
“We're really excited about that because it expands our ability to reach students from multiple disciplines who are interested in these issues,” Judson said.
At all levels of involvement, poverty research at Notre Dame is about centering human dignity, and Judson is making it a top priority in her EBPAC classes. Researching the causes, effects, and potential remedies of poverty requires students to think from diverse perspectives.
“No matter where our students end up down the road, we want them to have a sense of compassion and respect for people who are in challenging life situations,” Judson said. “Ultimately, we’re doing this work because everybody has innate value and dignity.”
