Professor of Sociology
My research is in the broad areas of social inequality and stratification, social demography and public policy, with an emphasis on inequality of educational opportunity and health among children and families. I am interested in the dynamics of inequality over the life cycle and across generations, and the ways in which circumstances during childhood have long-reaching effects throughout children’s schooling and into adulthood. Past work has examined the effects of childhood health and health policies on academic achievement and socioeconomic attainment; and educational inequality in health among children in immigrant families.
My current research includes investigation of class inequality in parental investments and parenting practices that are strongly implicated in children's development: both trends in patterns of inequality over time, as well as the effects of public sector investments on reducing inequality in family behavior and child development.
My research has been published in Social Forces, Demography, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, Social Science Research and other venues, and funded by NIH, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. At Brown, I am also an affiliate of the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC), the Annenberg Institute, the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, and Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4). I received my PhD in sociology from UCLA in 2007.
