Sandra Florian joined the University of Pennsylvania in August 2016 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and the Population Studies Center (PSC). She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Southern California. She also holds a Masters in Urban Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Sandra’s research focuses on the link between demographic processes and socioeconomic inequality. Substantively, her research explores the ways in which fertility, immigration, and family forms interact with individuals’ characteristics, particularly their class and race, shaping their socioeconomic outcomes, and broader patterns of social stratification and inequality. In her dissertation, she identifies the socioeconomic factors associated with different childbearing trajectories among Whites, Latinas, and African Americans. Then, she explores the extent to which motherhood affects women’s employment, a major means for social mobility. She investigates whether fertility has a different effect on employment among racial minority women, and how this effect changes over the life course. Sandra also studies the recent trends in childlessness – a fertility outcome that has received less attention, but that has become more common among younger cohorts – paying attention to the differences between voluntary, involuntary, and temporary childlessness.
Another line of her research also explores the family structure and patterns of multi-generational support in coresidential grandparent families in the U.S., investigating the factors that explain racial/ethnic differences in the living arrangements of coresident grandparents, i.e. grandparents living in the same household with grandchildren, and the socioeconomic and demographic variables that are associated with the likelihood that grandparents report having primary responsibility for the care of grandchildren. Her research draws from U.S. nationally representative data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Sandra uses demographic and statistical methods to study fertility, family, and immigration. At the University of Pennsylvania, she is working with Professor Emilio Parrado in the Hispanic Fertility Project.
Curriculum Vitae
Contact information:
sflorian@sas.upenn.edu
(215) 746-1800
McNeil 288
Photo credit: Marcus T. Wright