My dissertation, Job Quality: Changes, Timing, and Consequences, explores job quality stratification and change since 1988 using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1979 (late baby boomer) and 1997 (early millennial) cohorts. In 2020, I was awarded the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for this project. ​My research identifies job quality (defined here as a combination of seven employer-provided benefits and having a standard schedule) as an ongoing source of gender inequality in the labor market across all education groups and ages with significant impacts upon women’s labor market participation. Paper one, currently under review, asks whether increasing educational attainment has protected women from job quality declines. In another article from my dissertation, I document how job quality develops over the early to mid-career employment life course and reveal the timing mismatch between the birth of a first child and access to high-quality jobs. My poster on this paper received a 2021 Population Association of America Poster Award. A third dissertation article asks how job quality at the birth of a first child impacts future employment. Across these articles, my dissertation demonstrates the increasing challenges individuals, especially women, face when seeking to gain economic security through education and employment.

DISSERTATION COMMITTEE: Elizabeth Armstrong (Co-Chair), Deirdre Bloome (Co-Chair, Harvard), Fabian Pfeffer, Sarah Burgard, Kevin Stange (UM Public Policy)