PhD student Anna Walther received a Russell Sage Foundation research grant this year for her dissertation on the differences in financial security by race, ethnicity, and partnership status in the year preceding and following childbirth — examining how and whether the U.S. social safety net supports families’ economic security during the transition to parenthood. It also asks whether the safety net improves, or exacerbates, economic inequality. It’s entitled, Essays on the Social Safety Net, Economic Insecurity, and Inequality during the Transition to Parenthood.
The Russell Sage Foundation dissertation research grants “support innovative and high-quality dissertation research projects that address questions relevant to RSF’s priority areas: Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; Immigration and Immigrant Integration; and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality.”
Walther has a Bachelor’s degree in Community and Environmental Sociology and a Master’s Degree in Social Work with a specialization in Child, Youth, and Family Welfare. She was also awarded the Institute for Research on Poverty dissertation fellowship this year, which supports a UW-Madison doctoral student who pursues “rigorous poverty-related dissertation research.”
She is currently in the process of analyzing data and writing.