Jacob S. Hacker is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. An expert on the politics and character of U.S. social policy in historical and cross-national perspective, he is currently heading a Social Science Research Council project on the “privatization of risk.” In recent years, he has been a participant in the American Political Science Association’s Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a member of the advisory board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Covering America” project, for which he wrote the proposal, “Medicare Plus: Extending Health Coverage by Expanding Medicare.” In July 2006, legislation based on “Medicare Plus” was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As a Fellow at the New America Foundation, Dr. Hacker continued his work on social policy and economic insecurity in the United States. He is the author of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement -- And How We Can Fight Back (Oxford University Press, 2006), and Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press, 2005), written with Paul Pierson. He is also the author of The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton’s Plan for Health Security (Princeton University Press, 1997), and The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Dr. Hacker’s articles and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous popular and scholarly publications, including the American Political Science Review, The American Prospect, The Boston Globe, Perspectives on Politics, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Dr. Hacker's personal website can be accessed at: pantheon.yale.edu/~jhacker