Professor Daniel P. Miller Receives a William T. Grant Foundation Award
New York, NY– The William T. Grant Foundation is pleased to announce that Daniel P. Miller at the School of Social Work; Maureen Waller, Cornell University; and Lenna Nepomnyaschy, School of Social Work, Rutgers, received a Research Award under the Reducing Inequality focus area. This grant funds high quality, empirical projects that examine programs, policies, and practices that can reduce inequality among young people in the U.S. Their three-year grant is in the amount of $450,000.
About the Research
The research project, Fathers and Low-Income Children’s Academic and Behavioral Outcomes: The Role of Social and Economic Policies, asks if social and economic policies are potential levers for increasing father involvement and reducing economic disparities in youth academic and behavioral outcomes? Miller and his colleagues will examine existing survey and qualitative interview data to provide new insights into whether, and in which contexts, father involvement reduces economic-based inequality in children’s academic and behavioral outcomes. The team will use several nationally representative datasets to test if father residence and involvement are associated with differences in children’s reading, verbal, and math scores; grade retention; and suspensions for children from low- and high-income families. They will also consider children’s mental health symptoms and delinquent behaviors. To examine if state-level policies are associated with father involvement across states and over time, the team will compile a database of state-level wage, labor, child support, and criminal justice policies and link these to the individual-level datasets. The team will analyze the interview data for fathering challenges related to low-wage work, child support debt, and incarceration to contextualize the quantitative findings.
Research Grants
Research Grants target early- to mid-career researchers for high-quality empirical projects that fit one of our two focus areas. The largest of our three programs for researchers, Research grants are awarded three times each year. The Foundation awarded five grants in June for projects that will address inequality in youth outcomes. The Foundation is interested in inequality by race, ethnicity, economic standing, and immigrant origin status as it plays out across a range of systems, including the education, child welfare, and justice systems.
About the Foundation
The William T. Grant Foundation is a private philanthropy that invests in high-quality research with the potential to advance theory, policy, and practice related to children and youth in the United States. Currently, we are interested in understanding how we may reduce inequality among young people and how we can improve the use of research evidence in policy and practice.
For more information about the William T. Grant Foundation, click here.