In addition to my dissertation, I am working on a number of projects that address questions related to social mobility and inequality:

• Diaz, Christina. (Revise and Resubmit, Social Science Research.) “Learning How to Father: The Intergenerational Link between Perceptions and Parenting.”

I use data on the grandfathers and fathers of the 2001 U.S. birth cohort – measured in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (N=4,050) – to assess whether perceptions of the parenting men received as children influences their future paternal attitudes and behaviors.  I find a nonlinear association between experiencing warm fathering and men’s self-assessed parenting quality and stress.  Men with particularly warm fathers are more likely to report being good fathers themselves.  Those who reported having the harshest fathers also exhibit better paternal self-perceptions and lower stress.

• Diaz, Christina and Jenna Nobles.  ”The Intergenerational Production of the Health Gradient: Evidence among Mexican Immigrant Families.”

In the United States, scholars have documented a socioeconomic gradient in health among a diverse set of sub-populations, including children, urban residents, and ethnic minorities. In a striking counterexample, the gradient in health is much flatter among foreign-born residents. Second-generation adults, however, exhibit gradients that more closely approach those observed among other native-born residents. Our study looks for the origins of this puzzle by reconsidering it as inherently intergenerational.  We look for the period in life when parents’ and children’s health patterns begin to diverge and consider possible explanations for this divergence.

Both papers are available upon request.  In addition to these projects, I am in the early stages of examining heterogeneous returns to education for young mothers after birth. This work is in collaboration with a fellow graduate student at UW-Madison.