The $4 million National Poverty Research Center grant has been awarded to Stanford’s Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The grant, to which the University has pledged an additional $2 million contribution, will be used in a national center which monitors, elucidates and originates science-based policies on trends in policy and inequality. Its major development will be a web portal that makes hundreds of statistics on the issue–as well as related scientific research–readily available to the general public.

“This is a critical moment in U.S. history in which poverty is growing, long-term unemployment is increasing and income inequality is reaching an all-time high,” said Center Director and professor of sociology David Grusky in a statement to the Stanford Report. “The new center will be dedicated not just to monitoring these trends, not just to uncovering what drives them, but also to understanding how national economic policies affect them.”

The center will focus on regional issues as well as national ones. For example, the new California Welfare Laboratory (C-WELL) will highlight poverty and inequality issues in California specifically.

Stanford representatives will work closely with two other National Poverty Centers at UC-Davis and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sherry Glied.

President Hennessy related the grant to the Stanford Challenge.

“The Stanford Challenge, which we set forth five years ago, committed the University to seeking solutions to society’s most formidable problems,” he said in a statement to the Report. “This new national center allows us, in a very real way, to expand on that commitment.”

–Ellora Israni