PI on Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study
PI on "Couple Dynamics and Father Investments," "The Fragile Families Challenge Machine Learning, Qualitative Interviews, and Causal Inference" & "Fragile Families and the Transition to Adulthood"
Ph.D. 1989 Northwestern University, Sociology
William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Director of The Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child and Family Wellbeing (CRCFW)
Edin is one of the nation’s leading poverty researchers, working in the domains of welfare and low-wage work, family life, and neighborhood contexts, through direct, in-depth observations of the lives of low-income populations. A qualitative and mixed-method researcher, she has taken on key mysteries about the urban poor that have not been fully answered by quantitative work: How do single mothers possibly survive on welfare? Why don’t more go to work? Why do they end up as single mothers in the first place? Where are the fathers and why do they disengage from their children’s lives? How have the lives of the single mothers changed as a result of welfare reform? The hallmark of her research is her direct, in-depth observations of the lives of low-income women, men, and children.