Tach

Laura M. Tach

Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University
Chapter Leader: Finger Lakes SSN, New York State SSN
Areas of Expertise:
  • Children & Families
  • Inequality

Connect with Laura

(607) 254-5282

About Laura

Laura’s research examines urban poverty and family life. Her mixed-methods research examines how neighborhoods and families reproduce inequality and how public policy affects these processes. With funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she has studied housing policies designed to deconcentrate poverty. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, she has examined family instability and complexity, nonresident fathers, and household income volatility. She is also involved in a collaborative study funded by the Ford Foundation that examines the public and private strategies low-income families use to make ends meet in the post-welfare reform era, with a focus on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How Low-Income Americans Understand and React to the Earned Income Tax Credit

SSN Key Findings Brief,

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 11:
Christmas in April

In the News

Rachel Dunifon quoted on effects of parental addiction on children, "The Latest in Health: Battling Opioid Epidemic by Fighting Fake Meds, Treating Struggling Families" WRVO Public Media, April 22, 2018.
Laura M. Tach quoted on marriages breaking down, "Why Would-Be Parents Should Choose to Get Married" The Economist, November 25, 2017.
Laura M. Tach quoted in Alexia Fernández Campbell, "Neighborhoods Can Shape Success - Down to the Level of a City Block" The Atlantic, May 23, 2016.
"Big Moment for Working Parents," Laura M. Tach (with Senator Jamie Eldridge), Milford Daily News, May 19, 2015.
"When Taxes Aren’t a Drag," Laura M. Tach (with Kathryn Edin), New York Times, April 13, 2015.
Laura M. Tach quoted on recipients of Earned Income Tax Credit in H. Roger Segelken, "Study Reveals Why Working Poor Think They are 'Middle Class'" Phys.org, February 6, 2015.
Laura M. Tach's research on fathers’ involvement in family life discussed in Emily Alpert Reyes, "Survey Finds Dads Defy Stereotypes about Black Fatherhood," Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2013.
Laura M. Tach's research on absent fathers discussed in Erika Eichelberger, "Poverty Myths Busted," Mother Jones, March/April 2014.

Publications

"Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Economic and Cultural Explanations for How Lower-Income Families Manage Debt?" (with Sara Sternberg Greene). Social Problems 61, no. 1 (2014): 1-21.
Uses qualitative data to show how low-income families manage their debts mainly through private coping strategies, which trap them in costly cycles of indebtedness and hinder future prospects for economic mobility.
"Tax Code Knowledge and Behavioral Responses among EITC Recipients: Policy Insights from Qualitative Data?" (with Sarah Halpern-Meekin). Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 33, no. 2 (2014): 413-439.
Uses qualitative data to uncover the reasons behind low-wage workers’ behavioral responses to the incentives and disincentives of the tax code.
"Parenting as a Package Deal: Relationships, Fertility, and Nonresident Father Involvement among Unmarried Parents" (with Ronald Mincy and Kathryn Edin). Demography 47, no. 1 (2010): 181-204.
Shows that nonresident fathers’ involvement with their children drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end, and involvement declines even more when parents enter into new romantic relationships and have children with new partners.
"More than Bricks and Mortar: Neighborhood Frames, Social Processes, and the Mixed-Income Redevelopment of a Public Housing Project" City & Community 8, no. 3 (2009): 273-303.
Examines how redeveloping a public housing project into a mixed-income development changed neighborhood social dynamics.