The Niskanen Center’s Poverty Program Welcomes Three New Fellows

The Niskanen Center Poverty and Welfare Program was founded on the premise that economic freedom and efficient systems of social insurance, far from being at odds, are in fact close complements. As such, we are excited to announce the addition of three new fellows — Joshua McCabe, Peter Jaworski, and Ted Marmor — each of whom brings expertise and passion to a different facet of our mission.

Joshua McCabe, Niskanen Center Senior Fellow

Joshua McCabe is an assistant professor of sociology and the assistant dean for social sciences at Endicott College. He is an expert on tax and social policy and author of The Fiscalization of Social Policy: How Taxpayers Trumped Children in the Fight Against Child Poverty (Oxford University Press). His current project looks at the comparative politics of fiscal federalism and regional inequities in the United States and Canada, focusing on intergovernmental grants for healthcare and social assistance programs.

Joshua McCabe has previously contributed to the Niskanen Center in support of our work on cash-based solutions to child poverty and household stability, with an eye to the ultimate goal of a fully refundable child allowance. McCabe’s current project (see: “The Real Source of Teachers’ Struggles” and “Federalism in Blue and Red”) brings to light how fiscal federalism, as currently instituted in FMAP formula and various grant programs, hampers the provision of equitable public services in the poorest parts of the country. Additionally, McCabe’s thoughts on the comparative health systems of the U.S. and Canada provides a fresh perspective on trade-offs associated with popular “Medicare for All” proposals, and suggests a path forward for universal health insurance delivered at the state level.

Peter Jaworski, Niskanen Center Adjunct Fellow

Peter Martin Jaworski is an Assistant Teaching Professor teaching business ethics. He was a Visiting Research Professor at Brown University, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Wooster, and an Instructor at Bowling Green State University. His research interests include repugnant markets, especially donor compensation for blood plasma donations, the ethics of immigration, and social and political philosophy broadly. Peter’s has been published in academic journals including Ethics, Philosophical Studies, The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, The Journal of Business Ethics, The Journal of Value Inquiry, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, amongst others. He has also  been cited in or written for popular venues including The Economist, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, USA Today, Maclean’s, the National Post, Reader’s Digest, Canadian Business, amongst others. Along with Jason Brennan, Peter is the author of “Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests” published in 2016. He is a co-founder, and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Liberal Studies (Ottawa), an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute (Washington, DC), an Academic Advisory Board member with the Greater Mekong Research Center (Phnom Penh), and an Advisory Board member with the Freedom and Entrepreneurship Foundation in Poland.

Peter Jaworski’s work embodies our commitment to economic rights as individual rights, and has previously collaborated with the Center in our successful push to legalize compensation for bone marrow donors. We hope to extend this work into more ambitious proposals going forward, harnessing DonationEthics.com, a website Jaworski founded to lead campaigns on behalf of the rights of donor, most recently in an effort to block a Canadian proposal to ban compensation for blood plasma donations.

Theodore R. Marmor, Niskanen Center Adjunct Fellow

Theodore (Ted) Marmor’s scholarship primarily concerns welfare state politics and policy in North America and Western Europe. He particularly emphasizes the major spending programs, which is reflected in the second edition of The Politics of Medicare (Aldine de Gruyter, 2000) and the book written with colleagues Mashaw and Harvey in the early 1990s, America’s Misunderstood Welfare State (Basic Books, 1992). The author or co-author of eleven books, Marmor has published over a hundred articles in a wide range of scholarly journals, as well as being a frequent op-ed contributor to U.S. and Canadian newspapers. Professor Marmor began his public career as a special assistant to Wilbur Cohen Secretary of HEW in the mid-1960s. He was associate dean of Minnesota’s School of Public Affairs, a faculty member at the University of Chicago, the head of Yale’s Center for Health Services, a member of President Carter’s Commission on the National Agenda for the 1980s, and a senior social policy advisor to Walter Mondale in the Presidential campaign of 1984. He has testified before Congress about medical care reform, social security, and welfare issues, as well as being a consultant to government and non-profit agencies.

Ted Marmor brings to Niskanen a storied academic career as a trenchant and truthful scholar of social insurance in America. Consistent with our work on “The Free-market Welfare State,” Marmor sees public programs, from health insurance to Old Age Social Security, as essential compliments to a dynamic market economy. Through countless books and articles, Marmor has helped to not just describe how the American welfare state works, but also why it works the way it does, through nuanced analysis of the historical and political dynamics that also helps to inform the space of possibilities for future reforms.