She studies the impact of poverty, material hardship, and assets on family well-being and children’s outcomes. She has worked on asset-building social policies and programs at both national and international levels, promoting parents’ ability to plan financially and build assets for their children’s future. She is participating in Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship and Downpayment for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK), a large-scale social experiment researching universal Child Development Accounts, a project to help parents save for their child’s education. She is also a Principal Investigator in the study of the Hope Plus Savings Accounts program, an Individual Development Accounts demonstration project for working poor families in Korea.