CPRC

Kristin Mammen, assistant professor of economics, joined the faculty of Barnard in 2003. She teaches courses on economics of gender, microeconomic theory, and statistics.

Professor Mammen's research centers on topics related to the economic well-being of women and children, in both developing and developed countries. In polygamous families, she has studied the impact that a mother's rank has on the school enrollment, school expenditures, and anthropometric measures of her children. She has also investigated changes in women's work status and educational level that occur during the economic development process. Another research project has explored the relationship between pensions for the elderly and co-residence patterns within low-income South African families.

In more recent work with U.S. data, she has researched how the gender of children is related to the amount of time a father spends with them in intact marriages, the probability of their parents divorcing, and the likelihood of receiving child support payments in the event of divorce.

Currently she is investigating the long-term effects of the liberalization of divorce laws in the 1970s on the health, wealth, and labor market status of Americans who were young adults then and who are now approaching and entering retirement.

Professor Mammen's Departmental Biography Page