Michael Sherraden, a graduate of Harvard (AB) and the University of Michigan (MSW, PhD), is Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and founding director of the Brown School's Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St Louis. CSD tests policy innovations that have the potential to improve social and economic outcomes. Sherraden is the author of Assets and the Poor (1991), which proposes Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), matched savings to enable low-income families to save and accumulate assets. Additional research on asset building appears in Inclusion in the American Dream (2005) and Can the Poor Save? (2007). IDAs have been adopted in federal legislation, in more than 40 states, and in many other countries. An IDA program in Seoul—known as “Hope Development Accounts”—won a United Nations Public Service Award in 2010. Currently, CSD is undertaking an experimental test of Child Development Accounts (universal accounts at birth) in the State of Oklahoma, and research on youth savings is underway in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal. In another areas of work, Sherraden’s early research on civic service—National Service (1982) and The Moral Equivalent of War? (1990)—contributed to the creation of AmeriCorps in 1993, and CSD is today a leading center of research on civic service, especially international service. Also, CSD has large initiatives to study Productive Aging in both the United States and China. In 2010, Sherraden was listed on the Time 100 most influential people in the world.  He is married to Margaret Sherrard Sherraden, PhD, who is also a research colleague at CSD.