Dr Earle was a panelist for the Forum’s discussion on Delaying Pregnancy and Parenthood.
Alison Earle’s research focuses on how labor and social policies affect the health, well-being and economic security of working families in the United States and worldwide. In particular, Dr. Earle has focused on documenting the social gradient in job quality including access to paid leave and flexibility among working parents and its impact on gender, income and race/ethnic equality and parents’ ability to support their children’s healthy development. Earle’s first book, Raising the Global Floor: Dismantling the Myth that We Can’t Afford Good Working Conditions for Everyone, 2009, uses the global labor policy database she and Dr. Jody Heymann (McGill University) developed and other global economic data to assess the association between federal guarantees of a set of worker benefits and protections including paid leave and working time policies, and economic competitiveness. Dr. Earle has also led studies of the impacts of parental working conditions in families with a child with special health care needs. Her recent research includes a study of the determinants of wage loss among caregivers of children with special needs and adults with disabilities and the impact of having a child with special health care needs on the likelihood of job loss.
At ICYFP, Dr. Earle currently conducts research on inequalities in access to good jobs by race/ethnicity and immigration status for the diversitydata-kids.org project funded by The Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Earle is also conducting an equity analysis of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and developing state-level indicators of parental job quality also as part of the diversitydata-kids.org project.
Dr. Earle has provided expert testimony at Massachusetts congressional hearings on proposed paid family and medical leave and paid sick days legislation, and at U.S. congressional briefings on afterschool policy and funding. Her articles have been published in The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, The Journal of the American Public Health Association, Pediatrics, Community Work and Family, The American Educational Research Journal, and The Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, among others. Earle received the 2006 Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis Best Article Award for her co-authored article examining the link between economic competitiveness and paid sick days policy. Dr. Earle received her M.P.P. from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
