Poverty, Inequality and Opportunity
What role should governments play in alleviating poverty? Can public policy help foster prosperity and equality?
Latest Article

To Be Effectively Digital, We Need to Be More Human
I sat at the dining table on Christmas Eve, ready to meet my aunt at her favorite steak restaurant. When she arrived, she seemed frustrated and exclaimed, “Marvin, I don’t understand what is happening. I need to make a medical appointment and pay my bills. I can’t seem to do that now.” It was not […]Explore all Articles
filter by–Region
filter by–Country
search by–Keyword

Building Wealth Early: Why America Needs Mandatory Financial Literacy Education
03.14.25
“Equipping young people to manage money effectively ensures they can afford critical life milestones, like homeownership, family planning, and eliminating student debt, rather than struggling with financial insecurity for decades.”

Interview with African Union Youth Envoy Chido Mpemba
05.29.24
On April 13, 2024, HKS Student Policy Review Senior Editor John McQuillan spoke with Chido Mpemba. The coversation focused on a range of topics related to young people in Africa.

An Effective Public Private Partnership Solution for Addressing Sanitation in Slums: The Suvidha Centers in India
04.25.24
One model to provide sanitation in India’s slums is Suvidha (‘convenience’ in Hindi) centers: modern and large community water and sanitation complexes. The centers provide an important service to the community, provide employment, build capacity among workers and are financially sustainable.

American States Are Quietly Embracing the ‘Baby Bonds’ Revolution to Fight Inequality
04.8.24
As inequality rises because of the combined curse of growing inherited wealth and the perpetuation of the generational transmission of poverty, baby bonds appear to be a powerful tool to tackle one of the major challenges of the 21st century.
The Peruvian Book of Queerness: An Interview with Javier Ponce Gambirazio on Writing about Queer Experiences in Peru
03.3.24
Author Javier Ponce Gambriazio discusses writing about queer experiences in Peru.

Interview with David Beasley, Former Executive Director of the World Food Programme
02.20.24
On February 6, 2024, HKS Student Policy Review Senior Editor Ala’a Kolkaila spoke with David Beasley, the former Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP). The conversation focused mainly on food security and Beasley’s time at the WFP.

Interview with Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos
11.15.23
On November 13, 2023, HKS Student Policy Review Senior Editor Jane Petersen spoke with former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. The conversation covered a range of topics including what other countries can learn from Colombia’s peace agreement, poverty alleviation efforts, and the fight against climate change.

Businesses Benefit by Hiring People with Criminal Records
04.6.23
In 2019, Zach Moore was a new software engineer at a San Francisco-based tech company. He showed up to work early, walked around the neighborhood, and cleared his head. Incarcerated at age 15, Zach learned how to quiet his mind while spending 22 years in prison. For decades, he worked on himself and helped others […]

HPV is Not Just a “Women’s Disease”: Men Should get Vaccinated too
11.1.22
HPV has traditionally been framed as a disease that largely affects females, but should males get vaccinated as well? Ng Qi Siang argues that gender-neutral vaccination is more effective than female-only vaccination in terms of cost-efficiency and containing viral spread. He proposes that the government reframe HPV as a disease that affects all genders and move towards a gender-neutral HPV vaccination policy in the near future.

A Primer on Singapore’s Forthcoming Constitutional Amendment to “Protect” Marriage
09.15.22
While the government has announced that it will repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code, it has also sought to protect the definition of marriage from constitutional challenge. Lawyer and activist Daryl Yang explains what the resulting constitutional amendment may look like, as well as what it means to the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore.

Syrians need more than a compassionate plea to renew cross-border humanitarian aid
07.6.21
Over the past weeks and months, numerous think tanks and individuals have published reports and briefs on the looming humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria. [[1]] This déjà vu moment has not been lost on actors and agencies focused on aid in Syria. In mere weeks, the last remaining entry-point for humanitarian aid into northwest Syria […]

Incentivizing equity investments to address disproportionate Latino COVID-19 impacts
04.29.21
One of the accepted horrors of the pandemic is that Latinx populations sustain a disproportionately high burden of COVID-19. Take the city of San Antonio and surrounding Bexar county, for example, whose population is 60.7% Latinx.1 Of the COVID-19 cases and deaths where race/ethnicity was identified in the medical report, 75% of cases and 65% […]



