The Consequences of Housing Disadvantage

Sarah Dickerson, postdoctoral associate at the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy, and Warren Lowell, Ph.D. candidate in public policy and sociology, presented their research on the consequences of housing disadvantage in the United States.

Dickerson discussed “Chronic Residential Mobility and Academic Outcomes for Public School Children in North Carolina.” Lowell addressed “Who Counts? Educational Disadvantage Among Children Identified as Homeless and Implications for the Different Systems That Serve Them.”

Dickerson used a unique longitudinal dataset from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center to investigate the share of public school students in North Carolina who experience chronic residential mobility, its association with academic outcomes, and how these associations differ by race/ethnicity.

Lowell used data from public schools and homeless management information systems in Minnesota to examine the extent to which the populations of children identified as homeless by the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development overlap and to analyze differences in academic outcomes between these groups. He used these findings to discuss strategies to better integrate homelessness data and prioritize resources for children.

Dickerson joined the Duke Center for International Development as an adjunct instructor in 2021. She has worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Child and Family Policy since Fall 2019. Her research focuses on the impacts of maternal well-being on children’s health. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where she worked as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution and consulted for the World Bank and the Carter Center.

Lowell is a mixed methodologist who studies inequality, families and children, housing, and homelessness. His research questions are informed by several years of direct service as a social worker and mental health specialist with non-profit agencies serving families and children. He received his M.P.P. from the University of Minnesota and has several years of policy experience conducting public-facing research at the Tufts University School of Medicine, Future Services Institute, Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, and Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota.