I am a multidisciplinary social demographer with wide-ranging interests in inequality and wellbeing. My research engages questions relating to fertility, families, education, and maternal and reproductive health, with an emphasis on inequality by gender and race. Much of my current work asks whether and how family structure shapes health in infancy, motivated by the idea that the meaning and implications of marriage, cohabitation, and single motherhood depend on the surrounding social context. One project in this area, co-authored with Lidia Panico and Melissa L. Martinson, compares infant health inequalities and their underlying drivers across family structures in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Another related project examines heterogeneity across U.S. states in the association between parents' marital status and infant health outcomes.
My dissertation reflects my broader set of research interests, investigating questions about contemporary life in the United States following the dramatic social changes of the last half century. I explore the dynamic nature of educational inequality between families over the life course, the relationship between industrial decline and women’s shares of local labor markets, and intergenerational patterns of the age at parenthood. My master's thesis, published in Social Problems, examines how teachers' perceptions of parents depend on their family composition.
I also have a line of work on reproductive autonomy. Two papers on expert testimony in the abortion legislative process are published in Contraception [1, 2], and ongoing work with Leigh Senderowicz advances theory and methods related to the measurement of contraceptive access. Last, Jenna Nobles, Marcos Rangel, and I have a project examining the health and wellbeing returns to autonomous fertility timing.
I am also a member of the steering committee for the Feminist Demography Collective.