Laura Peck's research involves examining the impacts of U.S. social welfare policy--in particular state-level policy choices--on the economic well-being of families with children. She also engages in research on advancing program evaluation methods, in which capacity she has used cluster analysis, propensity scores, instrumental variables and other creative approaches to estimate subgroup effects in social experiments. Her teaching includes public policy analysis, program evaluation, and poverty and social welfare policy.
Articles
An Evaluation Use Framework and Empirical Assessment (with Lindsey Gorzalski), Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation (2009)
Structured Abstract
Background. Research on evaluation use focuses on putting evaluation recommendations into practice. Prior...
Giving and Getting: Charitable Activity and Welfare Receipt (with Chao Guo), Administration & Society (2009)
This study assesses the extent to which welfare recipients engage in giving money and time...
How Do Low-Skill Workers Fare in High Growth Areas? Job Accessibility in Phoenix, 1995-2000 (with John David Godchaux), Journal of Poverty (2009)
Lack of jobs has been blamed as an important cause of poverty. Scarce research on...
Do Anti-Poverty Nonprofits Locate Where People Need Them? Evidence from a Spatial Analysis of Phoenix, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2008)
This work explores the spatial connections between nonprofit organizations that have an anti-poverty focus and...
How Poverty and Segregation Impact Child Development: Evidence from the Chicago Longitudinal Study (with Michael D. Niles), Journal of Poverty (2008)
Living in poor and segregated neighborhoods has detrimental effects on children’s life chances. In an...