About

Kelly Musick is a Professor of Public Policy and Sociology in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Her research examines family change and social inequality, with a current focus on the intersection of parenthood, the structure of work and earnings, and social policy from a comparative perspective. Her work has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council. She is the Cornell lead for the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and co-PI of a cross-institution pipeline program for undergraduates called NextGenPop: Recruiting the Next Generation of Scholars into Population Research. Musick received her Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining Cornell, she was on the Sociology faculty at the University of Southern California.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Economics
• Political Science
• Demographic economics
• Psychology
• Labour economics
• Geography
• Engineering
• Gender studies
• Demography
• Social psychology
• Law
• Mathematics
• Developmental psychology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• State-level gender inequality and couples’ relative earnings following parenthood over four decades

  Social Science Research · 2026-01-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Remote Work and Fertility in the U.S.: Who Benefits?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• How Sexism in Institutions and Everyday Interactions Shapes Early Childbearing

  UNC Libraries · 2024-11-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Early childbearing is associated with poor outcomes for parents and children, potentially exacerbating inequality within and across generations. Building on the structural sexism and health perspective, we argue that systemic gender inequality is a conceptually important—and understudied—factor in early childbearing. Using survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health ( N = 5,052 female respondents and 32,595 person-years) merged to state, county, and school characteristics, we investigate how exposure to structural sexism during adolescence shapes early childbearing. We measure structural sexism in institutional domains with state and county-level measures of economic, cultural, and reproductive health. We also generate a novel measure of structural sexism in interactional domains, capturing gendered expectations, power dynamics, and conservative religious beliefs among school peers. We find that institutional sexism is associated with a higher likelihood of early childbearing among young women racialized as Black, but not among those racialized as White. Interactional sexism is also a significant predictor of early childbearing, and is especially salient for adolescents as they turn to peers for social cues about gender roles. Our results underscore the importance of institutional and interactional forces for shaping families and raise questions about increasingly polarized gender climates post- Dobbs.

  PublisherDOI

• How Sexism in Institutions and Everyday Interactions Shapes Early Childbearing

  American Sociological Review · 2024-10-31 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Early childbearing is associated with poor outcomes for parents and children, potentially exacerbating inequality within and across generations. Building on the structural sexism and health perspective, we argue that systemic gender inequality is a conceptually important—and understudied—factor in early childbearing. Using survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health ( N = 5,052 female respondents and 32,595 person-years) merged to state, county, and school characteristics, we investigate how exposure to structural sexism during adolescence shapes early childbearing. We measure structural sexism in institutional domains with state and county-level measures of economic, cultural, and reproductive health. We also generate a novel measure of structural sexism in interactional domains, capturing gendered expectations, power dynamics, and conservative religious beliefs among school peers. We find that institutional sexism is associated with a higher likelihood of early childbearing among young women racialized as Black, but not among those racialized as White. Interactional sexism is also a significant predictor of early childbearing, and is especially salient for adolescents as they turn to peers for social cues about gender roles. Our results underscore the importance of institutional and interactional forces for shaping families and raise questions about increasingly polarized gender climates post- Dobbs .

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Income Sources Across Childhood in Families With Nonresident Fathers

  Demography · 2023-01-30 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Unpartnered mothers rely on formal and informal income sources to support their coresident minor children. Building on work focusing on selective populations and shorter time horizons, we describe the family income sources on which U.S. women and their minor children rely for up to 17 years following an unpartnered birth or union dissolution (Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2001-2017; N = 12,369 person-year records from 3,148 children). Using rich description and fixed-effect models, we treat family income as dynamic, mapping change in the share and amount of family income from multiple sources as children age and women gain employment experience; enter new unions; experience changes in eligibility for public support programs; and receive contributions from kin, friends, and other household members. A patchwork of income sources is the norm throughout childhood, with mothers' earnings nearly universal but insufficient as a sole source of family income. Maternal repartnering increases family income through new partner earnings but is accompanied by offsetting reductions in other income sources, particularly from outside the household. In the context of weak institutional support for U.S. families, families with nonresident fathers rely on a complex mix of income sources to make ends meet.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Domestic Labour Involvement of Young Taiwanese Couples in Different Partnership and Parenthood Statuses

  SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks · 2023

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Marriage Intention and the Subsequent Marriage in Taiwan

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Parents’ Work Arrangements and Gendered Time Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  2022-01-28 · 6 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Objective: This study uses time diaries to examine how work arrangements shaped mothers’ and fathers’ time use at home and work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The pandemic transformed home and work life for parents, disrupting employment and childcare. The shift to work from home offered more flexibility than the workplace to manage increased care burdens, but the lack of separation between work and family also likely contributed to more challenging work environments, especially among mothers. Method: This study relies on representative data from the 2017-2020 American Time Use Survey and matching to estimate changes in time use among parents working from home and the workplace in the pandemic relative to equivalent pre-pandemic parents. Results: Data showed no increase among working parents in activities in which childcare was the primary focus. Parents working from home during the pandemic, however, spent substantially more time on supervisory childcare, particularly in combination with paid work, and housework. Mothers working from home also changed their paid work schedules.Conclusion: Parents working from home responded to childcare demands through multitasking and schedule changes, especially mothers, with potential negative effects on work quality and stress. Parents in the workplace during the pandemic experienced smaller changes in time use, suggesting little flexibility to accommodate changes in family life. Implications: The pandemic has generated new inequalities between those with and without the flexibility to work from home, and potentially exacerbated gender inequalities among those working from home.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Change and Variation in U.S. Couples’ Earnings Equality Following Parenthood

  Population and Development Review · 2022-03-22 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In the context of broad increases in gender equality and growing socioeconomic disparities along multiple dimensions of family life, we examine changes in within‐family earnings equality following parenthood and the extent to which they have played out differently by education. Our analysis relies on links between rich surveys and administrative tax records that provide high‐quality earnings data for husbands and wives spanning two years before and up to 10 years following first births from the 1980s to the 2000s in the United States (Survey of Income and Program Participation Synthetic Beta files; N = 21,300 couples and 194,100 couple‐years). Accounting for time‐invariant couple characteristics and year and age fixed effects, we find that wives’ share of total couple earnings declines substantially after parenthood and remains lower over the observation window, irrespective of cohort and education. Cohort changes in within‐family earnings equality are modest and concentrated among the earliest cohort of parents, and data provide little evidence of differential change by education. These findings have implications for women's economic vulnerability, particularly in the United States where divorce remains common and public support for families is weak.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Parents' work arrangements and gendered time use during the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 pandemic

  Journal of Marriage and the Family · 2022-12-09 · 54 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Objective: This study uses time diaries to examine how parents' work arrangements shaped their time use at home and work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The pandemic transformed home and work life for parents, disrupting employment and childcare. The shift to work from home offered more flexibility to manage increased care burdens, but the lack of separation between work and family also likely contributed to more challenging work environments, especially among mothers. Method: This study relies on the 2017-2020 American Time Use Survey and matching to estimate changes in time use among parents working from home and on site in the pandemic relative to comparable parents prior to the pandemic. Results: Data showed no overall increases in primary childcare time among working parents. Parents working from home during the pandemic, however, spent more time in the presence of children and supervising children, much in combination with paid work. Mothers working from home increased their supervisory parenting while working for pay more than fathers, and they more often changed their paid work schedules. The study's main findings were robust to gendered unemployment and labor force exits. Conclusion: Parents, especially mothers, working from home responded to childcare demands through multitasking and schedule changes with potential negative effects on work quality and stress. Parents working on site during the pandemic experienced smaller changes in time use. Implications: The pandemic has generated new inequalities between those with and without the flexibility to work from home, and exacerbated gender inequalities among those working from home.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01HD042690

  NIH · $613k · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• Ann Meier

  University of Minnesota

  17 shared

• Sarah Flood

  9 shared

• Katherine Michelmore

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  8 shared

• Rachel Dunifon

  Cornell University

  8 shared

• Larry L. Bumpass

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  7 shared

• Emma Zang

  Yale University

  6 shared

• Thomas Lyttelton

  Copenhagen Business School

  6 shared

• Christine R. Schwartz

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  5 shared