BIO

Grace’s research examines how early-life developmental contexts shape life-course social inequality by integrating insights from economics and developmental science. Using quasi-experimental and econometric methods with large-scale administrative and population data, she analyzes the effects of socioeconomic, institutional, and political conditions on adolescents’ educational and employment trajectories. Complementing this work on human capital formation, she conducts research on Bayesian approaches for estimating racial and ethnic disparities when self-reported race and ethnicity are unavailable. In a Gates-funded project, she has played a central role in evaluating existing and newly developed methods using large-scale U.S. Decennial Census microdata. She is also finalizing user-friendly software to implement these methods. Her work aims to inform policies that expand social mobility and advance more equitable education systems.