2024 News

At SSWR conference, CSD affiliates receiving awards, organizing sessions, and presenting

Affiliates of the Center for Social Development (CSD) are once again making significant contributions at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). The 2024 conference runs from January 10 through 14, 2024, in Washington, DC.

Trina R. Shanks

Faculty Director Trina Shanks, the Harold R. Johnson Collegiate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, will receive the society’s 2024 Social Policy Researcher Award on Saturday, January 13. The award recognizes her outstanding contributions to social policy.

Shanks will also lead “Black Reparations and Wealth Equality: Lessons from Child Development Accounts as a Policy Structure for Asset Building,” a roundtable discussion of research on Child Development Account (CDA) policy and its role in a proposed structure for the delivery of Black reparations. The roundtable will feature CSD Director Michael Sherraden, Research Associate Haotian Zheng, and Faculty Director Jin Huang.

Aytakin Huseynli

At the January 13 award ceremony, Postdoctoral Fellow Aytakin Huseynli will receive the society’s 2024 Outstanding Social Work Doctoral Dissertation Honorable Mention Award for “Effect of Resource Curse on Child Well-Being in Resource-Rich States, Specifically in Post-Soviet States.” The dissertation examined the potential of CDA policy to improve child well-being in low- and middle-income post-Soviet nations with natural resource wealth.

Huseynli also will present two papers. In “Governance and Child Well-Being: Evidence from Low-to-Middle-Income Countries,” she will present results from analyses of her dissertation dataset. In “Effects of Child Development Accounts on Family Financial Well-Being: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment,” she will report results from CSD’s long-running SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment.

Affiliates of the center have shaped the conference in numerous other ways.

As president of the Society for Social Work and Research, Faculty Director Sean Joe serves on the 2024 Conference Committee, which plans the annual gathering. Faculty Associate Yunju Nam and Faculty Director Jin Huang are serving as chairs of the Inequality, Poverty, and Social Welfare Policy cluster, one of 28 subject-matter clusters used to organize conference sessions. Nam and Huang have reviewed and selected abstracts of papers to be presented within that cluster.

In several conference symposia, affiliates will showcase papers on CSD’s core areas of work.

Huseynli has organized a symposium of four papers on CDA policy, including papers on SEED for Oklahoma Kids, the new CDA policy launched by Kazakhstan on January 1, Taiwan’s Saving Accounts for Future Education and Development of Children and Youth, and CSD’s ongoing CDA pilot in mainland China.

Faculty Director David Ansong has organized a symposium of five papers on financial capability and asset building in Africa, and Faculty Director Julie Birkenmaier has organized two symposia: one on the health implications of financial strain and well-being and another on factors that contribute to financial capability and well-being.

In addition, Birkenmaier and CSD Associate Director Lissa Johnson will lead a Special Interest Group session on the grand challenge to build financial capability and assets for all.

At the 2024 conference, CSD researchers will convene five special interest groups, organize four symposia, and deliver 23 presentations. Seven roundtables and workshops will feature representatives from the CSD community. In total, 27 affiliates – senior scholars, research staff, a postdoctoral fellow and research associates – will participate in the gathering.

CSD affiliates at the 2024 SSWR conference

Special Interest Groups

*Affiliate of the Center for Social Development.

Symposia

*Affiliate of the Center for Social Development.

Roundtables and other events

*Affiliate of the Center for Social Development.

Presentations (by day)

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Friday, January 12, 2024

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Sunday, January 14, 2024

*Affiliate of the Center for Social Development.