I am an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. 

My research examines how public policies can improve the lives of low-income people, and in particular children. A large part of my work focuses on children’s shared living arrangements, and in particular multigenerational coresidence. More recently my scholarship has concentrated on income support policies and the social safety net. In this work I have helped shed light on the impacts of cash transfers, refundable tax credits, and material well-being more generally.  I am currently engaged in several studies that center on food related policies and interventions, to help alleviate food insecurity and improve child and family well-being. Much of my research focuses on early childhood, a time when poverty and instability are known to have long-lasting detrimental effects on children’s health and development, and when social policies have been shown to have some of the strongest impacts on improving children’s life chances.  Central to all my research is a commitment to inform and improve policies that aim to alleviate material deprivation and poverty among low-income families and children. As such, most of my research is deeply interconnected.

My research has been funded by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, American Education Research Association, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, USDA RIDGE, Poverty Solutions, and the Russell Sage Foundation. My work has been published in an interdisciplinary set of journals such as Demography, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the American Journal of Public Health.

My CV is available here.