Robert Doar

Robert Doar is the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies and evaluates how improved federal policies and programs can reduce poverty and provide opportunities for vulnerable Americans. Specifically, he focuses on the employment, health, and well-being of low-income Americans and their children.

Mr. Doar has served as a cochair of the National Commission on Hunger and as a lead member of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity, which published the report titled “Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream.” Before joining AEI, he was commissioner of New York City’s Human Resources Administration, where he administered 12 public assistance programs. Programs included welfare, food assistance, public health insurance, home care for the elderly and disabled, energy assistance, child support enforcement services, adult protective services, domestic violence assistance, and help for people living with HIV/AIDS. In New York City, Mr. Doar oversaw a 25 percent reduction in the city’s welfare caseload and the transition to work of more than 500,000 public assistance applicants and recipients. Before joining the Bloomberg administration, he was commissioner of social services for the state of New York, where he helped to make the state a model for the implementation of welfare reform.

Since joining AEI he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and Real Clear Markets. Doar is a graduate of Princeton University.