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Click here for past NPC visiting scholars.

 

NPC Postdoctoral Fellows

 

Supported by the Research and Training Program on Poverty and Policy

2008-2009

Fernando Lozano
Fernando Lozano received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently Assistant Professor in Economics at Pomona College, in Claremont, California. Fernando Lozano is a member of the faculty of the American Economic Association Summer Program, and a mentor in the American Economic Association Pipeline Program, both sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. He is also a member of the American Society of Hispanic Economists.

His PhD dissertation explored the relationship between high school leadership participation and future education attainment among Hispanic students. Three of his current working papers explore the labor market outcomes of immigrants in the United States: in one article he explores the labor supply of male immigrants from Mexico; in a second article he explores the labor market return to obtaining a green card, as a part of a massive amnesty program, to live in the United States; and in a third paper he explores whether more stringent border patrol policing affects the selection of immigrant women from Mexico, and in turn their labor market outcomes.

During his stay at the National Poverty Center he will work on two new projects that analyze the relationship between religious participation and poverty among Hispanics in the United States. The first project will analyze whether religious participation helps acquire human capital and improve labor market attachment of Hispanic workers. The second project will analyze the role that religious participation has on the educational attainment of three cohorts of Hispanic students.

His research has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics and the Economics of Education Review, and has been founded by the National Cooperative of Postsecondary Education, the UCMEXUS Institute and the UC Language Research Institute.

2007-2009

Isaac McFarlin Jr.
Isaac McFarlin Jr. received his Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. He also holds a bachelors degree from Boston University. He is a labor economist who uses large-scale administrative databases to investigate the systemic impacts of education policy on student wellbeing. His research interests include evaluations of policies that help shape college access and student retention as well as labor market success.

While in residence at the Ford School of Public Policy, he will conduct a multi-state evaluation of college remediation – also known as developmental education – in promoting college success among academically underprepared students. The research employs regression-discontinuity methods to examine the extent to which remediation impacts college attainment and labor market performance.

Also during his visit, Dr. McFarlin will conduct an evaluation on how well tuition subsidies influence college-going behavior and labor market success. Using quasi-experimental methods and statewide administrative education data, he exploits the fact that in Texas (and other states), those residing in community college taxing districts receive larger tuition subsidies than their non-resident neighbors. His analysis will pay special attention to those living in high-poverty regions. The study's findings will help inform a growing literature on the "geography of opportunity."

Dr. McFarlin's research is supported by several organizations, including the Spencer and Smith Richardson Foundations, and the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.

2005-2007

Daphne Hernandez, Ph.D.
Daphne Hernandez received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Boston College. She also holds a masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelors degree from Princeton University.  Her research interests include father involvement, adolescent delinquency and risk-taking behaviors, and the effects of welfare and antipoverty policies on children.

Dr. Hernandez is currently conducting a qualitative study on incarcerated fathers and the mothers of their children. The study examines the processes by which childhood experiences help develop beliefs surrounding fatherhood and criminal involvement. The study also focuses on father’s employment opportunities and ability to pay child support, and the father’s relationship with his children and the mother of his children. The results from the study could inform survey data, along with policies and programs surrounding father involvement and family well-being, such as child support policies and work-incentive programs. Her dissertation, Predictors of adolescent delinquent trajectories: Family processes and neighborhood factors examined through longitudinal growth modeling, investigated adolescent risky and delinquent behaviors.  Dr. Hernandez is interested in gender and race differences in risky behaviors as delinquency theory, and most research in this area has been on white males. She is building on her dissertation research and using semiparametric mixture modeling to investigate trajectories of substance use involvement among female and male adolescents using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data set.  

Using the Fragile Families data set and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort Dr. Hernandez is studying how antipoverty policies influence child and family well-being.  She is exploring how family structure and changes in income effect participation in food assistance programs, as well as how these programs influence children’s health. Food assistance program participation has not been examined in these datasets and these projects present a unique opportunity to draw on the wealth of the data collected and the strengths of each dataset in informing the discussion on programmatic impacts on children.

Janice Johnson Ph.D.
Janice Johnson received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple
University in fall 2004. Her dissertation focused on the contribution of welfare job-training programs to recipients' employment outcomes. It was titled, "Separating Policy Hopes from Policy Realities: A Look at the Inner Workings of Welfare-to Work Training Programs and their Impact on Recipients' Employment Outcomes."

During her postdoctoral position, Dr. Johnson will build on her dissertation research to investigate the street level practices of unpaid community work experience programs (CWEs.) The welfare reform legislation of 1996 placed increased emphasis on CWEs, which are unpaid job placements designed to increase the employability of welfare recipients by providing them with job experiences, skills, and training. Her research will assess how these programs shape welfare recipients' welfare experiences and the contribution of these programs to recipients' employment outcomes.

Dr. Johnson's previous research experience includes positions with the Philadelphia Survey of Child Care and Work at Temple University, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and the School District of Philadelphia. She earned a BA in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1994.

2004-2006

Nicole P. Gardner Ph.D.
Dr. Gardner, a developmental psychologist specializing in work socialization, received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in the spring of 2004. Her dissertation was titled, "Linking Parental Work Experiences to Adolescents' Future Orientation".

Dr. Gardner plans two studies for her time as a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Poverty and Public Policy. Her research will use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the work experiences of single mothers in relation to adolescents' well-being. The studies will investigate links between maternal job conditions and adolescents' own employment expectations and attitudes and values toward education.

These studies should provide evidence to inform policies targeted at addressing the pejorative effects of poverty on children and families.

Gardner earned a B.S. in Psychology from Brown University in 1997.

2003-2005

Zulema Valdez, Ph.D.
Dr. Valdez was most recently a visiting research fellow (joint) at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and the US-Mexican Studies Center at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Sociology in the summer of 2002 for her dissertation, What is 'Ethnic' About Ethnic Entrepreneurship? The Economic Advantage of Ethnicity in Self-Employment Opportunities.

Dr. Valdez' research interests include economic sociology, international migration, race and ethnicity, and social inequality; she has been the recipient of grants from SSRC, the Ford Foundation, and UC MEXUS.

During her two-year postdoctoral position, Dr. Valdez will complete her book manuscript entitled, Economic Strategies of Survival and Mobility: Ethnic Entrepreneurship in the United States.