October 16, 2019
Bruce D. Meyer
Bruce D. Meyer

Bruce D. Meyer, the McCormick Foundation Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, will be presented with the 2019 Links Lecture Award from the American Statistical Association (ASA) on Friday, October 18 in Washington D.C.  

The award will be presented to Meyer during the Committee on National Statistics’ Data Linkage Day, which provides federal employees with the opportunity to share their progress working to link data for statistical purposes. Meyer’s Links Lecture is entitled “Linking Data to Improve Income Statistics.” 

ASA selects the award’s recipient based on demonstrated excellence in the advancement of statistics as a discipline through statistical use of administrative records and alternative data sources, record linkage, statistical methods for creating blended estimates, and issues associated with these activities such as privacy, confidentiality, researcher access, and reproducibility of results.

One of the foremost economists studying U.S. poverty and inequality, Meyer’s research agenda examines poverty measurement, tax policy, government safety net programs such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, food stamps, and Medicaid, and the accuracy of household surveys. 

He and co-author Professor James Sullivan from Notre Dame recently updated their Poverty Dashboard with 2018 data, which illustrates how simple corrections of the well-known flaws in the US Census Bureau’s official poverty measure result in a very different story about how poverty has changed over time in America.  

Meyer served as a commissioner and member of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, which led to the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018, which was signed into law early this year. 

More information on the significance of the Links Lecture Award is available at the American Statistical Association’s page on the award, and more information on Data Linkage Day is available from the Committee on National Statistics alongside an event livestream, which will begin at 12 p.m. CST on October 18th.