Dubbed the "intellectual godfather" of welfare reform (by National Review Editor Rich Lowry), Rector concentrates on a range of related issues, including the collapse of the marriage culture, the breakdown of the family and other social ills. He is a vocal proponent of marriage education, especially in low-income communities. Rector played a major role in crafting the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation, which, for the first time, required recipients to work or get job training in exchange for benefits. Since its passage, he has continued to examine not only the mounting costs to the taxpayer (nearly $1 trillion a year) but the role of welfare spending in undermining families. Rector’s impact on national policy includes the debate over how to fix America’s broken immigration system – both today and the last time around. His current research on the long-term fiscal costs to taxpayers of granting amnesty to an estimated 11 million unlawful immigrants, as envisioned in the Senate’s “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, builds on his influential work seven years earlier. His recent papers (among those listed below) include “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer,” “An Overview of Obama’s End Run on Welfare Reform,” “Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty,” “Reforming the Food Stamp Program” and “Understanding Poverty in the United States." He holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University. He is the co-author of America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty, a comprehensive 1995 examination of U.S. welfare programs, and co-editor of Steering the Elephant: How Washington Works (1987). For his research on welfare reform, he received the Dr. W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award, given annually to a Heritage employee who makes "outstanding contributions to the analysis and promotion of a free society."