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• How can policymakers increase social well-being?
• Which policies share improvements with vulnerable and at-risk groups in urban areas most effectively?
• How does growing urbanization affect the distribution of opportunity among these groups?
• How do institutions—such as the education and health systems, the labor market or the criminal justice system—increase or reduce inequality?
• And what are the short- and long-term consequences of inequality for social, economic, and political development?

These are some of the questions you’ll explore as a SUP concentrator, to help build your understanding of the causes and consequences of change in welfare and welfare distribution.

Curriculum

The SUP curriculum highlights political and managerial challenges specific to social policy and urbanization. Building political support for programs involving redistribution or social insurance can be complicated—beneficiaries often have little political influence. Social policy entrepreneurs and advocates need to create coalitions that include stakeholders whose interests may not align with those of intended beneficiaries.

Addressing urban problems can be particularly challenging because they often require cooperative action among cities or local, regional, and national governments. The solutions for social and urban problems are often beyond the skills or resources of any one sector—public, nonprofit, or private—requiring the different capabilities of each.

As a SUP concentrator, you will choose and become a specialist in a particular policy domain such as education, health, labor, poverty, criminal justice, housing, urban land-use planning, or urban economic development. Each domain has unique policy analytic, political, and managerial issues—an understanding of them is critical to being an effective practitioner.