Robert D. Plotnick
Professor, Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington
Robert D. Plotnick is professor of public affairs, and associate dean for academic affairs at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. He joined the Evans School faculty in 1984, and teaches courses in economic analysis and social welfare policy. His research primarily focuses on poverty, income inequality, income support policy, and related social policy issues. His latest writing—“The Alleviation of Poverty: How Far Have We Come?”—will soon appear in the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty.Plotnick holds a Ph.D. and MA in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in mathematics from Princeton University.
Rising inequality means—among other things—that low-income people are pushed further into poverty, and this makes it harder for them to earn their way out.