Greg Duncan

Distinguished Professor of Education
Department of Education

email: gduncan@uci.edu
phone: 949.824.7831
office: Education 2062

Biography

Greg Duncan comes to the University of California, Irvine from Northwestern University, where he served as the Edwina S. Tarry Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and Faculty Affiliate in the Institute for Policy Research. He has published extensively on issues of income distribution, child poverty and welfare dependence. He is co-author with Aletha Huston and Tom Weisner of Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children (2007) and co-editor with Lindsay Chase Lansdale of For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families (2001). With Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, he co-edited two books on neighborhood poverty and child development: Consequences of Growing up Poor (Russell Sage, 1997) and the two-volume Neighborhood Poverty (Russell Sage, 1997), which was also co-edited with Lawrence Aber. He continues to study neighborhood effects on the development of children and adolescents and other issues involving welfare reform, income distribution, and its consequences for children and adults. He joined the Northwestern faculty in 1995. He had been principal investigator of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics project at Michigan for the previous 13 years, professor of economics, and Distinguished Research Scientist at Michigan's Survey Research Center.

Duncan is a member of the interdisciplinary MacArthur Network on the Family and the Economy. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and president of the Population Association of America for 2007-08. He was elected president of the Society for Research in Child Development for 2009-2011.

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Downloadable Research Papers

Determinants of child development:

• "School readiness and later achievement" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as: Duncan, G.J. Dowsett, C.J. Claessens, A. Magnuson, K. Huston, A.C. Klebanov, P. Pagani, L.S. Feinstein, L. Engel, M. Brooks-Gunn, J. (2007) "School Readiness and Later Achievement" Developmental Psychology, 43(6): 1428-1446.


• "Kindergarten Skills and Fifth Grade Achievement: Evidence from the ECLS-K"
  (PDF)


• "The structure of achievement and behavior across middle childhood" (PDF)


• "Evaluating the role of 'Nothing to lose': Attitudes on risky behavior in adolescence" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Kathleen Mullan Harris, Johanne Boisjoly, and Greg J. Duncan. 2001. Evaluating the role of "nothing to lose" attitudes on risky behavior in adolescence. Social Forces 80(3): 1005-39.


• "Does money really matter? Estimating impacts of family income on children’s achievement with data from random-assignment experiments" (PDF)


• "Modeling the impacts of child care quality on children’s preschool cognitive development" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network and Greg J. Duncan. 2003. Modeling the impacts of child-care quality on children’s preschool cognitive development. Child Development 74(5): 1454-75.


• "Child well-being in an era of welfare reform: The sensitivity of transitions in development to policy change" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper will be published as:
Pamela Morris, Greg J. Duncan and Elizabeth Clark-Kauffman. Child well-being in an era of welfare reform: The sensitivity of transition in development to policy change. Forthcoming in Developmental Psychology.


• "The contribution of middle childhood contexts to adolescent achievement and behavior" (PDF)



Methodology:



• "Selection and Attrition in the NICHD Childcare Study’s Analyses of the Impacts of Childcare Quality on Child Outcomes" (PDF)
Among other things, this working paper provides an analysis of early attrition in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Other portions of it were included in: Greg J. Duncan and Christina Gibson-Davis "Connecting Child Care Quality to Child Outcomes: Drawing Policy Lessons from Nonexperimental Data", Evaluation Review, Vol. 30, No. 5, October, 2006, pp. 1-20.


• "The endogeneity problem in developmental studies" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Jens Ludwig. 2004. The endogeneity problem in developmental studies. Research in Human Development 1(1&2): 59-80.


• "Neighborhoods and adolescent development: How can we determine the links?" (PDF)
This paper appeared as:
Greg J. Duncan and Stephen Raudenbush, eds. 2001. Neighborhoods and adolescent development: how can we determine the links? In Does It Take a Village? Community Effects on Children, Adolescents, and Families, ed. A. Booth and A. C. Crouter, 105-36. State College, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press.


• "Off with Hollingshead: Socioeconomic resources, parenting, and child development"(PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Katherine Magnuson and Greg J. Duncan. 2002. Off With Hollingshead. In Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development, ed. Marc H. Bornstein and Robert H. Bradley, 83-106. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.


• "The long and short of asking questions about income, wealth and labor supply"(PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan and Eric Petersen. 2001. The long and short of asking questions about income, wealth and labor supply. Social Science Research 30:248-63.


• "Qualitative/Quantitative Synergies in a Random-Assignment Program Evaluation" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Christina Gibson and Greg J. Duncan. 2005. Qualitative/Quantitative synergies in a random-assignment program evaluation. In Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development: New Methods in the Study of Childhood and Family Life, ed. Thomas S. Weisner, 283-303. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


• "Economics and parenting" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson. 2002. Economics and parenting. Parenting: Science and Practice 2(4): 437-50.



Peer Effects:



• "Peer Effects in Drug Use and Sex Among College Students" (PDF)


• "Empathy or Antipathy? The Impact of Diversity" (PDF)



Residential Mobility Programs:



• "Neighborhoods and academic achievement: Results from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment" (PDF)


• "Fifteen years later: Can residential mobility programs provide a long-term escape from neighborhood segregation, crime, and poverty?" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Micere Keels, Stefanie DeLuca, Greg J. Duncan, Ruby Mendenhall, and James Rosenbaum. 2005. Fifteen years later: can residential mobility programs provide a long-term escape from neighborhood segregation, crime and poverty? Demography 42(1): 51-73.


• "Residential mobility interventions as treatments for the sequelae of neighborhood violence" (PDF)
A revised version of this chapter was published as:
Greg J. Duncan, Elizabeth Clark-Kauffman and Emily Snell. 2006. Residential mobility interventions as treatments for the sequelae of neighborhood violence. In Interventions for Children Exposed to Violence, ed. Alicia Lieberman and Robert DeMartino, 237-70. Johnson and Johnson Pediatric Institute.


• "Residential mobility from the client’s perspective: Participation in the Gautreaux Two housing mobility program" (PDF)


• Jennifer Pashup, Kathryn Edin, Greg Duncan, and Karen Burke. 2005. Residential mobility program participation from the client’s perspective. Housing Policy Debate 16(3-4): 361-92. (PDF)



Policy:



• "Effects of Welfare and Employment Policies on Young Children: New Findings on Policy Experiments Conducted in the 1990s" (PDF)
This was published as:
Pamela Morris, Lisa Gennetian, and Greg J. Duncan. 2005. Effects of welfare and employment policies on young children: new findings on policy experiments conducted in the 1990s. Social Policy Report 19(2).


• "Policies to promote the healthy development of infants and preschoolers"
  (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson. 2003. Promoting the healthy development of young children. In One Percent for Kids, ed. Isabelle Sawhill, 16-39. Washington, D.C.: Brookings.


• "Individual and parent-based strategies for promoting human capital and positive behavior" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson. 2004. Individual and parent-based intervention strategies for promoting human capital and positive behavior. In Human Development Across Lives and Generations: The Potential for Change, ed. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Kathleen Kiernan and Ruth Friedman, 93-135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


• "How different are welfare and working families? And do those differences matter for children's achievement?" (PDF)
  A revised version of this paper was published as:
  Greg J. Duncan and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale (eds.) For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families New York: Russell Sage, 2001, pp. 103-131.


• Links to New Hope two- and five-year reports:
Executive Summary
Five-year Report


• Links to Next Generation child and adolescent welfare experiment impact syntheses:
Overview
Executive Summary



Health:



• "Optimal indicators of socioeconomic status for health research" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Mary Daly, Greg J. Duncan, Peggy McDonough, and David Williams. 2002. Optimal indicators of socioeconomic status for health research. American Journal of Public Health 92(7): 1151-57.


• "Cleaning up their act: the impact of marriage and cohabitation on licit and illicit drug use" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper will be published as:
Greg J. Duncan, Bessie Wilkerson, and Paula England. Cleaning up their act: The effects of marriage and cohabitation on licit and illicit drug use. Forthcoming in Demography.



Other:



• "The PSID and me" (PDF)
A revised version of this paper was published as:
Greg J. Duncan. 2002. The PSID and me. In Landmark Studies of the 20th Century in the U.S., ed. Erin Phelps, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. and Anne Colby, 133-63. New York: Russell Sage.