Yoshikawa briefed journalists in September 2020: How Poverty and COVID Shape Children’s Lives.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director (with J. Lawrence Aber) of the Global TIES for Children center at NYU. He is a core faculty member of the Psychology of Social Intervention and Human Development and Social Intervention programs at Steinhardt. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Metropolitan Center for Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at NYU. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development.

Yoshikawa conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. He has also conducted research on culture, sexuality and youth and young adult development in the contexts of HIV / AIDS risk and prevention and is currently conducting research on GSAs (gender and sexuality alliances) in Massachusetts with Paul Poteat, Jerel Calzo, and others. His current projects also include leading the research and evaluation for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change and Lego Foundation funded partnerships of Sesame Workshop with the International Rescue Committee and BRAC to provide early childhood programming for Syrian refugee families in the Middle East and Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh (with Alice Wuermli); the first experimental evaluation of an unconditional cash transfer for families with young children in the United States (with Greg Duncan, Kimberly Noble, Lisa Gennetian, Katherine Magnuson, and Nathan Fox); and the Listening Project, a Spencer Foundation funded project evaluating a middle-school-based intervention in New York City schools to train students and teachers in transformative curiosity (interviewing and listening), with Niobe Way, Joseph Nelson, Alisha Ali and David Kirkland. His recent books include Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality (with Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, and Christina Weiland, 2017, Russell Sage) and Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children (2011, Russell Sage).

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received two awards for mentorship of ethnic minority students from the American Psychological Association. He obtained his PhD in clinical psychology from NYU.