Renee Ryberg is a senior research scientist in Child Trends’ education research area. She aims to use her quantitative skills for good, and leads teams of social scientists to answer questions that inform policy and program decisions to improve the well-being of youth and young adults, especially those living in poverty.

Can you tell us about your primary research interest(s)?

My work focuses on the intersection of child poverty and education. I study how our country’s social safety net and education systems work together—or against each other—to improve the well-being of young people and their families.

Here’s an important example: Many parenting students—or college students with children—live their lives at the crossroads of our education and safety net systems. These students must actively navigate both anti-poverty programs and the world of higher education, neither of which were explicitly built to accommodate their needs. I aim to produce and use research to better understand the unique situations that parenting students face as they seek economic mobility, and to better understand what works to support their journeys.

What sparked your interest in the connections between poverty and the education system?

I grew up in a small town of about 3,000 people in Maryland, named after Daniel Boone’s cousin. After I graduated from high school and went to college, Facebook made it easy to keep up with what my classmates were doing. I saw huge differences in the pathways that my high school and college classmates were taking—one group largely entering the workforce and starting families, another spending many more years in education. I wanted to understand how my peers ended up on such different life trajectories.