Katherine’s work centers around issues of public policy and family demography. Her two main types of research involve descriptive analyses documenting differences by socioeconomic status in areas such as educational attainment, family formation and dissolution, and evaluating the causal impact of public policies on the well-being of low-income families. Her work as an IES postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan involved documenting gaps in education outcomes by socioeconomic status, and then designing a randomized-controlled trial intended to increase the representation of low-income students at the University of Michigan. Her work in this area has recently been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation.