About

Daniel Schneider is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. His research is at the intersection of inequality, labor, social demography, and social policy. His current work examines the causes, contours, and consequences of precarious working conditions, leveraging novel survey data and stakeholder partnerships to understand how labor standards and high-road company practices can improve working conditions, economic security, and the well-being of workers and their families. He is also co-director of The Shift Project, contributing to research, training, and policy initiatives aimed at addressing issues related to labor and social inequality.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Labour economics
• Business
• Sociology
• Economics
• Law
• Gender studies
• Demographic economics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Improving health and economic security by reducing work schedule uncertainty

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 74 citations

  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Labour economics

  Work schedules in the service sector are routinely unstable and unpredictable, and this unpredictability may have harmful effects on health and economic insecurity. However, because schedule unpredictability often coincides with low wages and other dimensions of poor job quality, the causal effects of unpredictable work schedules are uncertain. Seattle's Secure Scheduling ordinance, enacted in 2017, mandated greater schedule predictability, providing an opportunity to examine the causal relationship between work scheduling and worker health and economic security. We draw on pre- and postintervention survey data from workers in Seattle and comparison cities to estimate the impacts of this law using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that the law had positive impacts on workers' schedule predictability and stability and led to increases in workers' subjective well-being, sleep quality, and economic security. Using the Seattle law as an instrumental variable, we also estimate causal effects of schedule predictability on well-being outcomes. We show that uncertainty about work time has a substantial effect on workers' well-being, particularly their sleep quality and economic security.

  DOI

• What Explains Racial/Ethnic Inequality in Job Quality in the Service Sector?

  American Sociological Review · 2020 · 95 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Demographic economics

  Precarious work in the United States is defined by both economic and temporal dimensions. While a large literature documents the extent of low-wages and limited fringe benefits, research has only recently examined the prevalence and consequences of unstable and unpredictable work schedules. Yet, it appears that such practices as on-call shifts, last minute cancellations, and insufficient work hours are common in the retail and food service sectors. While little research has examined racial/ethnic inequality in this temporal dimension of job quality, precarious scheduling practices may be a significant, if mostly hidden, site for racial/ethnic inequality because scheduling practices differ significantly between firms and because front-line managers have substantial discretion in scheduling. We draw on innovative matched employer-employee data from The Shift Project to estimate racial/ethnic gaps in these temporal dimensions of job quality and examine the contribution of firm-level sorting and intra-organizational dynamics to these gaps. We find significant racial/ethnic gaps in exposure to precarious scheduling that disadvantage non-White workers. We provide novel evidence that both firm segregation and racial discordance between workers and managers play significant roles in explaining racial/ethnic gaps in job quality. Notably, we find that racial/ethnic gaps are larger for women than for men.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Health Effects of Unstable Work Schedules in the Service Sector

  NIH · $414k · 2017–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Kristen Harknett

  Universidad Católica de Santa Fe

  32 shared

• Peter Tufano

  19 shared

• Joe LaBriola

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  16 shared

• Orestes P. Hastings

  Colorado State University

  16 shared

• Annamaria Lusardi

  Economic Policy Institute

  12 shared

• Susan E. Peters

  9 shared

• M. Christine Lovejoy

  Harvard University

  9 shared

• Erika L. Sabbath

  9 shared

Education

• PhD, Sociology

  Princeton University

  2012

• AB, Public Policy

  Brown University

  2003

Awards & honors

• IKEA Self-Scheduling Intervention: Baseline Report (HKS Shif…

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Walter C Willetth-429
• JoAnn E Mansonh-359
• Randy L. Bucknerh-268
• Edward Giovannuccih-267
• Kristen Andersonh-263