Research

I am broadly interested in topics relating to family, disability, the life course, education, inequality, and health. In my dissertation, I examine how having a sibling with a disability affects behavioral problems during childhood, risk behaviors during adolescence, and educational attainment as a young adult. While 12% of children in the U.S. have a disability, little is known about the impact they have on their siblings across the life course. My findings highlight the disproportionate disadvantage borne by girls with siblings with disabilities, highlighting the gendered ways in which disability intersects with family.

I have also used the American Time Use Survey in a paper with Carrie Shandra to challenge stereotypes of people with disabilities as only care-receivers and highlight the care they provide. This paper was recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family and received the 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from the ASA section on Disability and Society.

I am also interested in the role of disability in aging, an interest that grew out of my time as a National Science Foundation-East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute fellow in Japan. As a fellow, I worked under Yasuhiko Saito using the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging to investigate the health and disability trajectories of older Japanese adults.