BIO

H. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D. is currently on leave from the University of Michigan and is serving as the City of Detroit’s first-ever Chief Executive of Health, Human Services and Poverty Solutions in Mayor Mary Sheffield’s administration.

At the University of Michigan, he is the Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Policy and Social Justice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. From 2016-2026 he also served as the inaugural director of Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, an interdisciplinary, presidential initiative that partners with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty.

Shaefer’s research on poverty and social welfare policy has been published in top peer-reviewed academic journals in the fields of public policy, medicine, public health, sociology, and history, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and U.S. Census Bureau among other sources. He has presented his research at the White House and before numerous federal agencies, has testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, and has advised a number of the nation’s largest human service providers.

His work has been cited in media outlets such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Atlantic, and he has been featured on such programs as PBS NewsHour, Marketplace, All Things Considered, and CNBC’s Nightly Business Report. His 2015 book with Kathryn Edin, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2015 by the New York Times Book Review, and won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism among other awards.

Shaefer’s 2023 co-authored book, The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America, has been featured on MSNBC, The Atlantic, TIME, and the LA Times, among other outlets and was the recipient of the Richard A. Lester Book Award for important contributions in labor economics by Princeton University.

He is the co-founder of Rx Kids, the nation’s first community-wide prenatal and infant health cash prescription program that launched in Flint, Michigan in January 2024 and is now active in more than 30 rural and urban communities across Michigan. Through Poverty Solutions, Shaefer acted as a special counselor on anti-poverty policy to the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services from 2019-2021.

Shaefer received his B.A. in politics from Oberlin College and A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. He is the recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.