WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Joseph A. Kershaw, a Williams College economist who helped plan the nation's wartime rationing system and later served in President Johnson's 'War on Poverty,' died Sunday after a long illness. He was 76.
Kershaw was working at the Office of Price Administration in the 1940s when he helped devise the system that rationed food items and gasoline during World War II.
Advertisement'He helped design the nuts and bolts of how the rationing system worked -- the books and stamp process and how much each was worth,' said James Kolesar, a spokesman for Williams.
During a later stint in Washington from 1965-1966, Kershaw served as director of program planning and evaluation at the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he was responsible for measuring the effects of the war on poverty.
The war on poverty, under director Sargent Shriver, was part of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' program.
From 1948 through 1962, Kershaw headed the economics department at the Rand Corp., where he developed a research program on the Soviet economy.
Kershaw first came to Williams in 1956 as a vistiing professor and returned in 1962 as a full professor of economics. A year later, he was named the college's first provost, overseeing academic budgets and long range planning.
AdvertisementHis projections as provost lead to Williams' decision to become co-educational, Kolesar said.
New York's former Gov. Hugh Carey in 1976 appointed Kershaw director of the state commission on the future of higher eduction, formed to study the financing and structure of higher education in the state during severe budget constraints.
Kershaw later served as acting vice president for administration and treasurer of Williams.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Anna (Nettleton), a son, Stephen Kershaw, of Bellflower, Calif., and two granddaughters, Sarah Kershaw of Boston, and Amy Kershaw of New York.