Lilian Brandt

Lilian Brandt (1873–1951) was an American author, historian, philanthropist, and social reformer. She is noted for her involvement in social welfare-related projects, particularly her works that compiled and interpreted statistical and factual information for social workers. Brandt was also a historian of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Background Brandt was born May 15, 1873 She graduated at Wellesley College, where she also completed a master's degree in economics and history in 1901.

After completing her undergraduate studies, Brandt started teaching history and classical languages in different colleges. Her early work on social welfare attracted the attention of Edward T. Devine, who appointed her in 1902 as the secretary of the Charity Organization Society's Bureau of Labor Statistics. which is a group of "college women" who were interested in social settlement work. Brandt served as a mentor to fellow social reformer Mary van Kleeck in New York City before World War I.

Brandt died June 4, 1951. Other related works that directly addressed poverty include The Causes of Poverty (1908), which highlighted the assumptions that explained the persistent differences in the conceptualization of poverty as well as the consequences of these differences in theoretical orientations. She also suggested that data in many of America's largest cities have underestimated the death rates from tuberculosis.