Assistant Professor
School of Education
September 1, 2014
“I am looking forward to collaborating and interacting with students, faculty, and staff at UCI.”
Maria Rosales-Rueda recently joined the School of Education at UCI as an Assistant Professor. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy with a specialization in human capital and program evaluation, in June 2014, from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation explored the interactions between family investments, early-life shocks, and human capital formation among children in both developing and developed countries.
During her time at the University of Chicago, Dr. Rosales-Rueda worked at the Center of Economics of Human Development led by Professor James Heckman. In particular, she participated in a project that studied the channels (e.g. maternal investments and children’s skills) underlying a nurse home visiting program in the U.S. that combined prenatal care, parenting education, and family planning components targeted to disadvantaged mothers. Also, at the Harris School of Public Policy, she participated in the impact evaluation of an NGO education program on schooling, labor market, and health outcomes of disadvantaged youth in Guatemala.
Dr. Rosales-Rueda is interested in understanding the formation of human capital across the life cycle with a special focus on the importance of early childhood. Key to her research is the notion that human capital encompasses skills that are multiple in nature and related to cognition, personality, and health. Her research agenda explores questions such as:
- Why do human capital gaps between socio-economically diverse children emerge early in life?
- How do these gaps contribute to later educational, health, and wage inequalities?
- Can public policy interventions remediate or mitigate early disadvantage?
Hallmarks of her research include the combination of large, nationally representative longitudinal, and experimental data with strong quantitative methods designed to approximate causal analyses.
I am very happy to join the interdisciplinary faculty at the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. With my economics and public policy background, I am hoping to greatly contribute to the Educational Policy and Social Context specialization for the doctoral program. I am looking forward to collaborating and interacting with students, faculty, and staff at UCI.