CV and Biography

James P. Ziliak holds the Carol Martin Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics and University Research Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Kentucky. He is the Department Chair and is Founding Director of the Center for Poverty Research and was the Founding Executive Director of the Kentucky Federal Statistical Research Data Center.  He served as assistant and associate professor of economics at the University of Oregon from 1993-2002, and has held visiting positions at the Brookings Institution, Russell Sage Foundation, University College London, University of Michigan, and University of Wisconsin. His research expertise is in the area of labor economics, with particular emphasis on U.S. poverty, food insecurity, and tax and transfer policy. Recent projects include trends in earnings and income volatility;the intergenerational transmission of welfare; the causes and consequences of food insecurity; and the effect of survey nonresponse on the level and trends in poverty and inequality. 

He served as Chair of the National Academies of Science Committee on National Statistics Panel on the Supplemental Poverty Measure,  as Chair of the Board of Overseers of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and as Chair of the National Academies of Science Workshop on Research Gaps and Opportunities on the Causes and Consequences of Child Hunger. He also served as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Examination of the Adequacy of Food Resources and SNAP Allotments, the NAS Panel to Review and Evaluate the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation Content and Design, and the Panel on Improving USDA’s Consumer Data for Food and Nutrition Policy Research. He is co-editor of SNAP Matters: How Food Stamps Affect Health and Well Being at Stanford University Press (2015), and editor ofWelfare Reform and its Long Term Consequences for America’s Poor  published by Cambridge University Press (2009) and Appalachian Legacy: Economic Opportunity after the War on Poverty published by Brookings Institution Press (2012). He received a BS degree in economics and BA degree in sociology from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Indiana University.