Professor Edward D. Berkowitz is a Professor of History at George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

.

A graduate of Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, Berkowitz received his Master's and Doctoral degrees in American History from Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. His area of special expertise is the history of Social Security

Social Security (United States)

In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...

 and related social policies.

Before moving to George Washington in 1982, he served as the first John F. Kennedy Fellow at the University of Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts

This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

 at Boston and as a senior staff member of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.
He has consulted on various aspects of social welfare policy with such organizations as the Milbank Memorial Fund, The Century Foundation

The Century Foundation

The Century Foundation is an US progressive think tank. It was founded as a nonprofit public policy research institution on the belief that the prosperity and security of the United States depends on a mix of effective government, open democracy, and free markets. The Foundation is headquartered...

, the Committee on Economic Development, the Hastings Center

Hastings Center

The Hastings Center, founded in 1969, is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit bioethics research institute based in the United States. It is dedicated to the examination of essential questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment...

, and the Health Insurance Association of America.
He is the author of more than 70 articles on various aspects of social welfare policy.

He is the son of former Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 professor Monroe Berkowitz

Monroe Berkowitz

Monroe Berkowitz was Professor of Economics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he was chair for many years, and director of the Bureau of Economic Research...

(1919-2009).

Works

• "Review: Commissioning the Future, Getting the Present", Reviews in American History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 294-299
• Something Happened : A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies, Columbia University Press, 2006, ISBN 9780231124942
• Disabled Policy: America's Programs for the Handicapped, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 9780521389303
• America's Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, ISBN 9780801841286
• Mr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen, University Press of Kansas, 1995, ISBN 9780700607075
• To Improve Human Health: A History of the Institute of Medicine, National Academies Press, 1998, ISBN 9780309061889
• Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, ISBN 9780299189549
• Creating the welfare state: the political economy of twentieth-century reform, Authors Edward D. Berkowitz, Kim McQuaid, University Press of Kansas, 1992, ISBN 9780700605286