Research

Current Projects:

The New Social Program Users: Demographic Shifts in Social Program Participation Since the Great Recession
The Great Recession was the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression and the toughest test for America’s contemporary work-based social safety net. This project analyzes whether or not the depth of the recession coaxed participation from new types of individuals. It also begs the question, what happens to people who are subject to a work-based safety net when work disappears?

Cracking the Ceiling: Has Access to the Top Income Positions Changed Over Time? (with Fabian Pfeffer)
This project seeks to analyze movements into and out of the top income and earnings positions in America over time and to explain these changes from a demographic perspective. As inequality in America has dramatically risen, has the very top end of the income/class structure also grown more rigid? We use survey and administrative data to conduct our analyses.

The Death Squeeze: How Parental Death Reproduces Inequality in America
Does a parent’s death affect their grown adult children differently depending on the timing? Given the socioeconomic and racial gradient in mortality, the death of a parent is likely to occur earlier for some and later for others. Does this differential create a barrier to upward mobility? Is it a mechanism for the reproduction of racial and class inequality?

Welfare States and Inequality in Rich Countries: The Proliferation of Work-Based Safety Nets and Inequality in Developed Economies
Rich countries use different approaches to providing a social safety net to their citizens, ranging from entitlement regimes to work-based systems. Evidence suggests that spending on the social safety net is negatively correlated with inequality because redistributive policies that buttress a ‘strong’ safety net also neutralize inequality. This project focuses instead on the nature of the welfare state and whether work-based approaches, which filter workers into low-skill, low-paying jobs, actually increase inequality.

Sibling Socialization: Sibling Composition and the Direct/Indirect Impacts on Gendered Outcomes (with Limor Gabay-Egozi and Natalie Nitsche).
The family is the first social institution into which we are born and siblings can exert early, strong and sustained influences on an individual. Following in the tradition of other researchers who explore gender dynamics within sibling groups, this project seeks to apply these theories to a wider set of gendered outcomes beyond educational completion. We also seek to test the mechanisms by which these dynamics occur.

Click here for Lloyd Grieger’s CV (Feb 2018)