Katherine Michelmore, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, has won a $29,272 grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to study the effect of the earned income tax credit (EITC) on job quality among single mothers. Natasha Pilkauskas, assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, is also a principal investigator on this project.

Michelmore and Pilkauskas’s project will analyze how EITC expansions have affected the job quality of single mothers, who are the primary recipients of this tax credit. Investigators will look at both job quality, including schedules, multiple jobs, overwork, occupation, unionization, and other benefits; and dimensions of long-term improvement, including stability, tenure, and wage growth. They will rely on data gathered from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.

The Russell Sage Foundation was founded in 1907 to better “social and living conditions in the United States.” Today it focuses on improving the methodological and theoretical core of the social sciences in order to help develop and enhance social policies. In addition to research funding and support, the Russell Sage Foundation also sponsors seminars and working groups and maintains an in-house publication wing to help better disseminate social science research.

Michelmore, who joined Maxwell in 2016, is also a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research. Her research focuses on family policy, the economics of education, and labor economics, and her work has been published in journals including The Journal of Labor Economics, The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Demography. 

You can find more information about Michelmore’s grant in this press release.

02/27/20