David Brady

David Brady is a Professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. Previously, he held roles including Professor and Director of the Blum Initiative on Global and Regional Poverty at UC Riverside (2015-2024), Visiting Research Professor at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (2020-2024), and Adjunct Professor at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs since 2013.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Sociology with minor in Public Management, Indiana University (2001)
• M.A. in Sociology, Indiana University (1997)
• B.A. in Sociology with minor in Political Science, University of Minnesota (1994)

Research focuses on poverty, inequality, social policy, globalization, and labor markets. Key themes include cross-national comparisons of welfare systems, immigration impacts, unionization effects, and racial disparities in economic outcomes. His work bridges sociology, political science, and public policy, emphasizing empirical analysis of structural and institutional drivers of inequality.

Major contributions include books like The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty (2016) and Rich Democracies, Poor People (2009). His articles analyze topics ranging from refugee integration in Germany to Medicaid's role in reducing racial health gaps.

Labs/Teams: Associated with the WZB's Inequality and Social Policy research unit and the Blum Initiative. Active in policy-oriented research collaborations focusing on global poverty trends and social policy frameworks.