Maria Stanfors Ph.D.

Dr. Stanfors' research interest includes the economic histories of education, female labor force participation, housework, and family formation, as well as the interrelationships between them. I run parallel projects on past and present gender differentials in labor market outcomes (focusing on wages, careers, and union membership); gender and time allocation; family formation and family dynamics differentials across educational and occupational groups; and the role of assortative mating for income inequality and health. She is particularly interested in how unpaid care responsibilities are combined with paid work at different stages of the life course - something that is particularly important to understand in contexts with an aging population. Her research deals with topical and highly policy-relevant issues. Some of her research deals with present-day contexts (Sweden, EU, and the US) where she makes use of large-scale surveys (e.g., SHARE, SILC, NSFG) and Swedish register data. In historical projects she works with data from SEDD (Scanian Economic and Demographic Database) and data that she has put together in the HILMA-database, which contains demographic and socio-economic data at individual level for a variety of industries and banking and insurance and for other groups of white-collar workers in the private sector in Sweden during the period 1890-1940.