Pioneering Contributions
Michael Sherraden, PhD, MSW, is a teacher, researcher, and policy specialist. He is the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the founding director of the Center for Social Development in Washington University’s Brown School.
Dr. Sherraden is renowned for his work to create and test social innovations that improve social and economic well-being, especially for marginalized populations. He is known for developing asset-based policy, which makes assets available to everyone, supporting the development of human potential. His contributions to social policy and social work have been domestically and internationally transformative.
Through his dissertation on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s and two volumes edited with Donald Eberly, National Service (1982) and The Moral Equivalent of War? (1990), Sherraden presented the potential of civic service as a framework for facilitating successful transitions to adulthood. His work contributed to the creation of AmeriCorps, and he attended the White House signing ceremony for the enacting legislation. Sherraden organized and sponsored numerous convenings on civic service, including the first global research conference on the subject, in 2002 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the 2015 United Nations meeting on international service.
Sherraden’s asset-based development policy formed the nucleus of his seminal 1991 book Assets and the Poor and has had far-reaching policy implications. President Bill Clinton mentioned Sherraden’s work in two State of the Union addresses, and President George W. Bush included elements of it in his campaign platform.
In 1994, Sherraden founded the Center for Social Development (CSD) in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Now celebrating its 30th year, the center remains a hub for research on civic engagement, productive aging, financial capability, and asset building. One of Sherraden’s best known research projects at CSD is SEED for Oklahoma Kids, an ongoing experiment to test a universal and progressive Child Development Account (CDA) policy. Findings from the historic study have informed CDA policies in seven U.S. states, as well as national asset-based social policies in the United Kingdom, Israel, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. In SEED OK’s next phase, Sherraden and CSD scholars will study how youth in the experiment access and use their CDAs upon turning 18-years-old.
Sherraden’s scholarship has also contributed to international social development, generating initiatives in the United Kingdom, Canada, Peru, China, Australia, Korea, Uganda, and other countries. The emergence of financial social work in Singapore and China has been deeply influenced by Sherraden’s pioneering work at CSD.
In 2021, Sherraden and CSD experts partnered with a multinational group to launch Financial Capability and Asset Building in Africa (FCAB Africa). The initiative aims to broaden the financial inclusion and well-being of marginalized people on the continent by preparing social workers and other human-service practitioners with financial knowledge and tools to support their clients. FCAB Africa is also working to reduce vulnerability to labor trafficking through a collaboration to support financial empowerment.
Career Highlights
Sherraden earned his MSW and PhD from the University of Michigan. He is the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis where he has taught since 1979. As a Fulbright Research Fellow, Sherraden studied social-insurance and social-welfare systems in Singapore during 1992-93. He has held numerous visiting appointments, including the inaugural S.R. Nathan Visiting Professorship of Social Work at National University of Singapore from 2014 to 2018.
Sherraden has advised on asset-building policies in many countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. From 2000 to 2005, he advised the UK Prime Minister’s Office and Chancellor of the Exchequer on a policy to provide a universal and progressive asset-building account for every newborn, the first such policy in the world. Sherraden also served as an advisor for the Israeli Government on the implementation of the nation’s universal CDA policy in 2015. With colleagues at the Center for Social Development, Peking University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and other institutions, Sherraden has helped to introduce financial social work in mainland China as part of a nationwide initiative to improve the financial capability of social workers and other human-service professionals.
Biographic Data
Sherraden grew up in Junction City, Kansas. His parents ran a small grocery store, and he learned from them early lessons on helping others. He recalls that they spent time providing neighbors with transportation to doctors’ appointments, and helping immigrants in their community become settled and learn English.
Sherraden began studying social relations at Harvard University in 1966, specializing in both sociology and psychology. He became involved in community engagement there through the student-run Phillips Brooks House, and in student activism against the war in Vietnam. After he completed his BA in 1970, Sherraden worked as a summer camp director in Nova Scotia from 1972 to 1973 and again in 1976. He met his wife, Margaret Sherraden, in 1972. Margaret and her father introduced Sherraden to the field of social work.
From 1972 to 1974, Sherraden directed a child-care facility/residential center for teenagers in Zion, Arkansas. He enrolled in the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work, receiving his MSW in 1976 and his PhD and social work and social science in 1979.
Significant Achievements and Awards
Sherraden’s contributions have been recognized through a number of awards and other honors. He has received the Distinguished Career Achievement Award and the Social Policy Researcher Award from the Society for Social Work and Research, the Jim Billups Award for Social Development Innovation from the International Consortium for Social Development, and the Career Achievement Award from the Association for Community Organization and Social Action.
He holds several honorary professorships and degrees and was named a Pioneer by Influencing Social Policy. The University of North Carolina created the Michael Sherraden Lecture in his honor. The annual event showcases the work of noted scholars, policy makers, and thought leaders from around the world. Sherraden was among those elected to the inaugural class of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW) and went on to serve on the academy’s Board of Directors. Sherraden has been a pivotal leader in the Grand Challenges for Social Work, contributing to the initiative’s formative documents and serving as on the Executive Committee.
Sherraden has received numerous awards for his scholarship. The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) gave him the Social Policy Researcher Award in 2018 and the Distinguished Career Achievement Award in 2023. In 2022, he was named in the Stanford University–Elsevier list of the top 2% most-cited scientists in various disciplines worldwide. The International Consortium for Social Development honored him with the James Billups International Social Development Leadership Award in 2021, and Adelphi University School of Social Work awarded Sherraden the Richard Lodge Prize in 2015.
In 2010, TIME magazine listed Sherraden as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He received the Career Achievement Award from the Association of Community Organization and Social Action in 2006 and the Flynn Prize for innovation in social policy from the University of Southern California in 2001. Sherraden received a Fulbright Research Fellow for study at the National University of Singapore in 1992 and 1993.
Significant Pulbications
Published in 1991, Sherraden’s groundbreaking book Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy which brought asset building to the forefront of policy conversations and research. He is also the author or editor of several other notable books, including: Inclusion in the American Dream: Assets, Poverty, and Public Policy (2005), Can the Poor Save? (2007), Asset-Building and Low-Income Families (2008), Asset-Building Policies and Innovations in Asia (2014), Working and Living in the Shadow of Economic Fragility (2014), and Inclusive Child Development Accounts: Toward Universality and Progressivity (2020). A prolific writer, Sherraden has authored and coauthored numerous peer-reviewed works. Among his most significant journal publications are “Asset Building and Child Development: A Policy Model for Inclusive Child Development Accounts” (RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2021), a study on a policy structure for Black reparations (in the June 2024 issue of the same journal), “Applied Social Research: Aiming for Impact” (Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 2019), “Impacts of Child Development Accounts on Maternal Depressive Symptoms: Evidence from a Randomized Statewide Policy Experiment” (Social Science and Medicine, 2014), and “Effects of Child Development Accounts on Early Social-Emotional Development: An Experimental Test” (JAMA Pediatrics, 2014).