Dr. Daniel Schroeder is a Research Associate at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources (RMC). He is primarily responsible for evaluating the impacts of government programs in the area of human services, including child support, child care subsidy, welfare reform, workforce development and unemployment insurance, among others. He is currently Principal Investigator (PI) evaluating the Non-Custodial Parent (NCP) Choices program, a highly successful program mandating workforce development services for low-income NCPs who are unable to keep up with their child support payments. He is also PI for the RMC portion of several studies involving collaborations with other researchers, including the Texas Child Care Market Rate Survey, a study with Dr. Laura Lein of the UT School of Social Work that is now in its sixth year; the 3-City Study of Low Income Populations, working with Dr. Robert Moffitt and others to track outcomes for these samples through analysis of administrative data; and the recently completed study of Unemployment Insurance as a Safety Net for former TANF Recipients, a collaboration with Dr. Chris O’Leary of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Dr. Schroeder’s responsibilities also include study design, analysis planning, and statistical interpretation for other RMC projects and collaborations, including a study of Factors Associated with Child Care Subsidy Take-Up. Much of his recent work has focused on using statistical matching techniques to select quasi-experimental comparison groups in studies for which an experimental design may not be feasible. He has applied these techniques in numerous studies, including estimating the impact of Workforce Investment Act (WIA) training services for the US Department of Labor; examining the Effectiveness of Project Bootstrap for the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG); selecting comparison schools to evaluate the effectiveness of Project SOS: Supporting Optimal Scholarship in improving the Advanced Placement participation and performance of economically disadvantaged high school students; as well as several studies mentioned above.
Dr. Schroeder also has extensive experience evaluating programs for the poor, including the Achieving Change for Texans Waiver, examining the impacts of Texas’ package of welfare-reform initiatives; a study of outcomes for TANF leavers and divertees; and several studies of the child support system, looking at the interplay between earnings of absent parents and the welfare dynamics of their former families.
Dr. Schroeder received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, with a major in Social Psychology and a minor concentration in Statistics. He has had original research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and has papers under review at other peer-reviewed journals.