American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare

Michael Sherraden, PhD

Inducted in 2010

Bio

Michael Sherraden is the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor and founding director of the Center for Social Development (CSD), Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis. Sherraden grew up working in a small family grocery store in Kansas, with parents who worked long hours yet also found time to help out in the community. He was recruited via a “geographical admissions” policy to attend Harvard (AB 1970), and later went to the University of Michigan (MSW 1976; PhD 1979).

His major areas of research have focused on civic (non-military) service and asset building. Regarding civic service, Sherraden’s dissertation on the Civilian Conservation Corps (1979), was following by research publications National Service: Social, Economic, and Military Impacts (1982) and The Moral Equivalent of War? A Study of Non-Military Service in Nine Nations (1990). This research informed the creation of AmeriCorps in the U.S. In 1993 Sherraden was at the White House when the legislation was signed by President Clinton. (At this writing in 2025, President Trump is trying to destroy it.) The larger vision is that some form of service might become a normal part of most everyone’s life, and be respected as much as military service.

Regarding asset building, Sherraden introduced this policy concept as applying to the full population. His books on this subject include Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy (1991), Inclusion in the American Dream: Assets, Poverty, and Public Policy (2005), Asset-building Policies and Innovations in Asia (2014), and Inclusive Child Development Accounts: Toward Universality and Progressivity (2020). CSD’s long-running experimental research has informed universal Child Development Accounts (CDAs) starting at birth in several U.S. states, as well as in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Israel, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. This work continues to expand. The larger policy vision is that someday all people in the world might accumulate assets for their social and economic development.

Among other awards, Sherraden is recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration (2006), the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Research (2023), and the Social Work Pioneer Award from NASW Foundation (2024). In 2010, he was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and 2024 marked the 30th Anniversary of Center for Social Development. In a long career he is most proud of the students he has trained, and their remarkable work now and in the future.