Jacob Hacker

Hacker was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon. He graduated summa cum laude in 1994 from Harvard University with a B.A. in social studies, and he received his Ph.D. from Yale in political science in 2000. His first book, The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security, was published in 1996, while he was a graduate student at Yale.

Hacker is a media contributor and has testified before the United States Congress. He was widely recognized as a contributor to the health care plans for three of the leading Democratic candidates — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards — in the presidential election of 2008.Julie Rosner and Melissa Block, NPR News, February 22, 2008 Hacker's plan, Health Care for America, is outlined in a report for the Economic Policy Institute. It proposes providing health care for uninsured or under-insured Americans by requiring employers to either provide insurance to their workers or enroll them in a new, publicly overseen insurance pool. People in this pool could choose either a public plan modeled after Medicare or from regulated private plans.

Hacker's work with the international think tank Policy Network has had a major influence on the policies of many European political parties{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22993321 |title=BBC News |accessdate=2013-07-22|publisher=The BBC}} and his concept of pre-distribution has become a cornerstone of the UK Labour Party's economic policy and his name has even been mentioned by Prime Minister David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons.{{cite web |url=http://www.policy-network.net/content.aspx?CategoryID=354&ArticleID=3491&fp=1 |title=Pre-distribution and the crisis in living standards |accessdate=2014-03-11 |publisher=Policy Network |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140311152142/http://www.policy-network.net/content.aspx?CategoryID=354&ArticleID=3491&fp=1 |archive-date=2014-03-11 |url-status=dead }}

Hacker was a fellow at New America in 1999 and 2002. In 2007 he co-chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance's conference, "For the Common Good," and oversees a Social Science Research Council project on the "privatization of risk."

Hacker's 2010 book, the New York Times bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Richer Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon & Schuster), written with Paul Pierson of UC Berkeley, argues that since the late 1970s the American middle and working classes have fallen further and further behind economically because policy changes in government favor the rich and super-rich.

Their 2016 book American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper argues for the restoration and reinvigoration of the United States mixed economy.

In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.{{Cite web|url=http://news.yale.edu/2017/04/11/five-professors-elected-american-academy-arts-and-sciences|title=Five professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences|website=Yale News|access-date=2017-04-18}}

In July 2010 the Economic Security Index was launched. Developed by Hacker and a multi-disciplinary research team with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the ESI measures the share of Americans who experience at least a 25 percent decline in their income from one year to the next and who lack an adequate financial safety net to replace this lost income.

Hacker is married to Oona A. Hathaway, a Professor of Law at Yale University and former Supreme Court clerk to Sandra Day O'Connor.{{Cite book | title = The Divided Welfare State | last = Hacker | first = Jacob | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2002 | isbn = 978-0-521-01328-4 | page = xvi | url = https://archive.org/details/dividedwelfarest00jaco }}

• Let them eat Tweets : how the right rules in an age of extreme inequality, with Paul Pierson, New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2020. {{ISBN|9781631496844}}
• {{cite book |others=with Paul Pierson |title=American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-4516-6782-0}}
• {{cite book |others=with Paul Pierson |title=Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4165-8869-6}}
• {{cite book |title=Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System--and How to Heal It |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-231-14602-9}}
• {{cite book |title=The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-19-533534-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/greatriskshift00jaco }}
• {{cite book |title=The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement--And How You Can Fight Back |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-517950-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/greatriskshiftas00hack }}{{cite web |first=David |last=Leonhardt |authorlink=David Leonhardt |title=The Shrinking Safety Net |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/books/review/Leonhardt.t.html |publisher=New York Times Book Review |date=October 29, 2006 |accessdate=November 15, 2010}}
• {{cite book |others=with Paul Pierson |title=Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-300-10870-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/offcenterrepubli00hack }}
• {{Cite book |title=The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-521-01328-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/dividedwelfarest00jaco }}
• {{cite book |title=The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President's Clinton's Plan for Health Security |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-691-04423-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/roadtonowheregen0000hack }}

• Pre-distribution
• Policy Network

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• [http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/2/jacob_hacker_on_the_debate_over Jacob Hacker on his new book Winner-Take-All Politics] - video interview by Democracy Now!

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Category:1971 births

Category:American political scientists

Category:Harvard College alumni

Category:Living people

Category:Writers from Eugene, Oregon

Category:Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:Yale University faculty

Category:Social Science Research Council

Category:New America (organization)

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:21st-century American Jews