Russell Sage Foundation names Economic Professor Chinhui Juhn 2015-16 Visiting Scholar

Award to fund research conducted by Dr. Juhn and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program Director Elizabeth Gregory

Chinhui Juhn, the Henry Graham Professor of Economics, has been named a 2015-2016 Visiting Scholar by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Established in 1907, the Russell Sage Foundation in one of the oldest American foundations and was created for "the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States."  Today’s its exclusive focus is on “strengthening the methods, data, and theoretical core of the social sciences as a means of diagnosing social problems and improving social policies.”

The full-time appointment will allow Dr. Juhn to continue her work as the principal investigator of a research study titled “Who Needs Kids? Fertility, Workforce and the Future.” Dr. Elizabeth Gregory, Professor of English and Director of the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, is the project’s co-principal investigator.

Together, Drs. Juhn and Gregory are researching and writing a new book on the intersections of work policy and fertility that will be a continuation of their separate research on the economic and social dynamics informing men’s and women’s choices around work and family.

Dr. Juhn is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on labor policy. She has been awarded five research grants from the National Bureau of Economic Research.  In the 2012-2013 academic year, Dr. Juhn worked in the White House for the Obama administration as a Council of Economic Advisers staff member.

Dr. Gregory is the author of Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood (2012/2007, Basic Books), which is based on in-depth interviews with more than 100 women who became mothers for the first time in their late thirties and early forties. Dr. Gregory’s extensive collateral research delves into data and makes analysis that shatters some myths surrounding later motherhood.

Additionally, Dr. Gregory serves as Key Personnel and Chair of the Work/Life Committee, within the University of Houston’s National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant project.

- Shannon Buggs