Associate Professor Rafael Engel received a PhD in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin as well as an MSW from the University of Michigan and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Engel is the Research Director for Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh. With Jeff Shook and Sara Goodkind, he oversees the Pittsburgh Wage Study. He has authored journal articles on a variety of topics including poverty in later life, income inequality, welfare benefit levels, and depressive symptomatology. His current research focuses ON Jewish identity. He is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Books
Engel, Rafael J. & Schutt, Russell, K. (2017). The Practice of Research in Social Work, 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Davis, Larry E. & Engel, Rafael J. (2011). Measuring Race and Ethnicity. New York: Springer
Recent Publications
Kim, S., Engel, R., Goodkind, S., & Shook, J. (2024 Accepted), Diverging trajectories of child externalizing behavior by family economic status at birth: The mediating role of neighborhood poverty. Journal: Journal of Social Service Research.
Tillman, H., Huerta, C., Engel, R., & Shook, J. (2024). Human service organizations’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic: Challenges and innovative solutions. The Tropman Report – 2024, 24-32. Tropman-2024.pdf.
*Kim, S., Thyberg, C., Engel, R., Wexler, S, & Woo, J. (2024). Does working full-time guarantee hospital service workers’ material well-being? A latent class regression analysis. Social Work Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svae020.
Wexler, S., *Kim, S., Engel, R., Shook, J., & Woo, J. (2024). Can workers and their families live on a living wage? Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 50, 4. doi: https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.4746
Shook, J., Goodkind, S., Ballentine, K., Woo, J., Engel, R. J, Tillman, H., & Schleitwiler, T. (2023). Using research to build power: The Pittsburgh Wage Study. Journal of Community Practice, 31(3–4), 488–508. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2023.2272152
- Aging
- Poverty/income inequality
- Jewish identity
