Dr. Daniel Schneider will be the inaugural speaker in the new Triangle RDC Sponsored Speaker Program, co-hosted by SSRI and DUPRI. This new speaker program invites researchers using confidential micro-data from the RDC network to present their research, in conjunction with a (short) workshop/Q&A session on access to these types of data here at Duke. Dr. Gale Boyd, Director of the Triangle RDC will be available to answer questions from researchers interested in accessing confidential micro-data at Duke. Dr. Schneider will also be available after the talk to describe his experiences with using these data for research.
BIOGRAPHY: Daniel Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University in 2012, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at UC Berkeley from 2012-2014. Schneider’s research is focused on the family and social inequality. His work has examined economic influences on family formation, including work on labor union membership and marriage and asset ownership and marriage. His current research examines how the economic shocks of the Great Recession have affected relationship quality, marriage, and fertility. A second line of research focuses on household finances and particularly on household financial fragility. He has been using the non-public versions of data from NCHS, available in the RDC network, to support his research.
RDC MICRO DATA PROJECT ABSTRACT: AMERICAN FERTILITY IN THE GREAT RECESSION (NCHS) The effects of the Great Recession on the fertility of American women are examined to understand an array of economic conditions that may affect the likelihood of birth in a given month. This project investigates whether macro-economic conditions affect fertility, for whom these effects are most pronounced, and the pathways by which any such effects might operate. The National Survey of Family Growth, 2006-2010 calendar-month data, and other data sources will be used to determine how unemployment, mortgage delinquency and foreclosure, and consumer confidence as well as media coverage of the recession are linked to the likelihood of birth in a given month. Data on birth intentions will be employed to provide some insight into whether the recession has reduced plans for future births, suggesting lasting effects, or not, suggesting more temporary effects. A set of socio-demographic individual characteristics and data on attitudes and family background are used to examine variation in the effects of the recession on fertility. Calendar months of conceptions, contraceptive use, sexual inactivity, and romantic relationship status derived from the public-use file are used to examine the mechanisms connecting the macro-economy to fertility. The use of restricted variables (region, state, county, and CBSA) for Place of Residence at Interview, combined with macro-economic data at several levels of aggregation to the individual level NSFG data, will allow for examination of exogenous variation in economic condition on both spatial and temporal dimensions.