About the Authors
Gina Adams is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, where she codirects child care research. Her current research includes multistate studies on child care subsidy implementation, analyses of child care data from the National Survey of America’s Families, research on child care providers and subsidy policies, and the National Head Start Impact Study. She was the assistant director of the Child Care and Development Division at the Children’s Defense Fund. She was also a child care teacher, and has worked with low-income families. She has an M.A. in public policy from Duke University.
Martha R. Burt directs the Urban Institute's Social Services Research Program; her career has spanned many aspects of public policy relating to vulnerable populations. She participated in the first round of ANF case studies, and wrote the Minnesota state report and a brief analyzing linkages among safety net programs at the beginning of federal welfare reform. She directed the second round of income support and social services case studies, and orchestrated production of state updates and analytic papers based on case study findings. Dr. Burt received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1972.
Michael Fix is an attorney and principal research associate at the Urban Institute, where he directs the Immigration Studies Program. His previous publications include Overlooked and Underserved: Immigrant Students in U.S. Secondary Schools (with Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco) and "All Under One Roof: Immigrant Families in an Era of Reform" (with Wendy Zimmermann).
John F. Holahan is director of the Urban Institute's Health Policy Research Center. Dr. Holahan has managed numerous health research projects in the last 25 years and authored many books and papers on health policy. Much of his work has focused on the Medicaid program, as well as state health policy more broadly, and issues of federalism and health. He has also published research on the reasons for the growth in the uninsured over the past decade and on the effects of proposals to expand health insurance coverage on the number of uninsured and the cost to federal and state governments.
Pamela A. Holcomb, a senior research associate, joined the Urban Institute in 1985. Her research has addressed a wide range of issues concerning poverty, welfare, employment, training, and social services. She has focused special attention on identifying factors that affect policy implementation and institutional performance, particularly in the area of welfare reform. She directed the second round of TANF case studies for ANF, and is currently engaged in several other implementation studies of welfare reform.
Robert I. Lerman, director of the Urban Institute's Labor and Social Policy Center, is a professor of economics at American University. He has written widely on welfare, income inequality, child support, youth employment, and fatherhood issues, and has worked on government efforts to reform welfare programs. Dr. Lerman's publications include the prize-winning essay "Separating Income Support from Income Supplementation" (Institute for Socioeconomic Studies, 1985), and "Retreat or Reform: New U.S. Strategies for Dealing with Poverty," in Social Policy Review (2000). Dr. Lerman earned his A.B. from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Pamela J. Loprest is a labor economist and senior research associate at the Urban Institute. Dr. Loprest's research focuses on low-wage labor markets and barriers to work among disadvantaged populations. Her work includes study of the economic status and employment prospects of former welfare recipients, including how former welfare recipients transition into the labor market, how welfare agencies serve recipients with disabilities, and the impact of disability among welfare recipients on work. Dr. Loprest has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been at the Urban Institute since 1991.
Karin Martinson is a consultant to the Urban Institute. She has over 15 years of experience as both a researcher and a policy analyst on a range of issues related to low-income families, including welfare reform, employment and training programs, child support, and child care. She has extensive experience designing and conducting implementation and process research. She was a senior policy analyst at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at DHHS and a researcher at the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC).
David Merriman is a professor of economics at Loyola University Chicago. He spent the 1999–2000 academic year as a senior research associate in the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project. He specializes in state and local public finance. Professor Merriman's past research has included studies of the distributional effects of state income and sales taxes, differing rates of health care expenditure growth across states, and the impact of cigarette tax increases on state revenues. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Winconsin-Madison in 1983.
Kristin Anderson Moore, a social psychologist, is president and senior scholar of Child Trends. She studies trends in child and family well-being, the effects of family structure and social change on children, positive development, the determinants and consequences of adolescent parenthood, and the effects of welfare and welfare reform on children. She is a member of the Family and Child Well-Being Research Network, which examines factors enhancing children's development and well-being. She also serves on the Advisory Council for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In 1999, Dr. Moore received the Foundation for Child Development Centennial Award for linking research on children's development to policies that serve the public interest.
Demetra Smith Nightingale is a principal research associate in the Urban Institute's Labor and Social Policy Center, where she is director of the Welfare and Training Research Program. She is an expert in social policy, and for over 25 years has conducted research on employment, welfare, and poverty. Her recent books include The Low-Wage Labor Market: Challenges and Opportunities for Economic Self-Sufficiency, coedited with Kelleen Kaye, and The Government We Deserve: Responsive Democracy and Changing Expectations, coauthored with C. Eugene Steuerle, Edward Gramlich, and Hugh Heclo. She holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the George Washington University.
Jeffrey S. Passel is a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, where he has focused on the impacts and integration of immigrants on American society, and the demography of immigration. Prior to joining the Urban Institute in 1989, Dr. Passel directed the Census Bureau's program of population estimates and projections and its research on demographic methods for measuring census undercount. Dr. Passel is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has a Ph.D. in social relations from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Monica Rohacek is a research associate at the Urban Institute, where she conducts research on child care and early education. Her main areas of interest include the supply, demand, and costs of child care; child care workforce issues; the child care subsidy system; and related national, state, and local policies. She is currently working on the National Head Start Impact Study, on a study about child care providers and subsidy policies, and on a project examining the availability and use of child care policy variables for research.
Juliet P. Scarpa is a senior research assistant at Child Trends; she has a background in sociology, and particular interest in criminology, deviance, and community ecology. Ms. Scarpa has provided analytical and programming support, as well as synthesizing research materials for literature reviews, for multiple Child Trends projects. In addition, she has provided support for many Assessing the New Federalism papers and briefs using NSAF data.
Sarah Staveteig is a research associate with the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, where she has participated in research on topics relating to the devolution of social policy. She has analyzed quantitative data from the NSAF, and has published papers on racial and ethnic inequalities in the United States and on marginal tax rates facing low-income families. She helped manage social impact surveys in southern Africa. She earned a B.A. in sociology from Grinnell College.
Kathryn Tout is a senior research associate at Child Trends. She is a developmental psychologist with a background in the study of children's socioemotional development, early childhood care and education, and welfare policy. As part of the Assessing the New Federalism project, Dr. Tout has used the NSAF to analyze variations in child care patterns for children of different ages and with different family characteristics. She also participated in case studies investigating state child care policies and practices under welfare reform.
Sharon Vandivere is a senior research analyst at Child Trends. She is interested in adolescent risk-taking behaviors, the well-being of children in poverty, and child abuse and neglect. She has coauthored a number of briefs through the Assessing the New Federalism project. In addition, she coedits The Child Indicator, a quarterly newsletter focusing on social indicators.
Martha Zaslow is a developmental psychologist and a senior scholar at Child Trends. She also serves as director of the Content Areas on Welfare and Poverty and Early Childhood Development at Child Trends. Her work focuses on the development of children in poverty. In particular, she has studied the implications of the family, child care, and policy contexts on the development of young children and adolescents.
Sheila R. Zedlewski is the director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center. Ms. Zedlewski's research deals with welfare reform, participation in safety net programs, and poverty. She is also an expert on the development and use of microsimulation models to address the effects of taxes and spending programs on the distribution of income. Her recently published articles examine the relationship between welfare reform and Food Stamp program participation and the changing characteristics of families in cash assistance programs, including levels of disadvantage among those who have remained on welfare.
Welfare Reform: The Next Act, edited by Alan Weil and Kenneth Finegold, is available in paperback from the Urban Institute Press (6" x 9", 272 pages, ISBN 978-0-87766-710-0, $26.50).
