National Children’s Study Federal Advisory Committee Member
Dr. Cancian is Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work, L&S Associate Dean for Social Sciences, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research considers the relationship between public policies and changes in marriage, fertility, and employment, with a focus on the implications of child support policy for the well-being of divorced and never-married families, the employment and income of women who have received welfare, and the impact of married women’s growing employment and earnings on marriage patterns and the inter- and intra-household distribution of income. Ongoing research projects consider the implications of multiple partner fertility for family organization and policy, as well as the interactions of the incarceration, child welfare, and child support systems.
Professor Cancian has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a Visiting Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and will spend 2010-2011 as a W. T. Grant Foundation Distinguished Fellow in residence at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. She has served as Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and Vice President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of Michigan.