Dr. Elizabeth Peters, an Institute fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute, is a labor economist and demographer with more than 30 years of experience in social and family policy research. Her work focuses on family and social investments in children and youth, family outcomes and risk factors, the role of the family as a social safety net, and the impacts of public policies on father involvement. She has several current projects that assess the impact and implementation of policies such as paid leave and schedule control that help workers manage work and nonwork responsibilities related to family. Her previous research has examined the effects of public policies such as divorce laws, child support policy, child care policy, taxes, and welfare reform on family and child behaviors and outcomes.

Before joining Urban, Peters was a professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and was the founding director of the Cornell Population Center. She is currently Professor Emerita at Cornell. From 1993 to 2004, she was a partner in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development–funded Family and Child Well-Being Network, where she directed the network’s fatherhood efforts. She was also a member of the steering committee that guided the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics’ Nurturing Fatherhood initiative. Peters earned her MPP and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.