Sandra L. Hofferth

Sandra L. Hofferth is an American sociologist, professor emerita in the Department of Family Science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, and research professor in the Maryland Population Research Center. She is the former co-director of the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics and founding Director of its Child Development Supplement.

She is known for her research on family policy, child well-being, and time use, with a particular focus on gender, work, and parenting.

Biography Hofferth received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and psychology from Swarthmore College in June 1967. She held a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Traineeship in Social Psychology from 1967 to 1968 and again from 1970 to 1972. She earned her Master of Arts in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in August 1971, with a thesis titled Cooperation and Competition in Peasant Communities under the supervision of Henry A. Landsberger.

Hofferth completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in August 1976. Her dissertation, titled "Modeling the Contraceptive Behavior of Couples: An Exchange Approach," was chaired by J. Richard Udry.

Career Currently, Hofferth is Professor Emerita at the School of Public Health and Research Professor at the Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland at College Park. During this period, she co-directed the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics and led its Child Development Supplement. She also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology and a research associate at the Population Studies Center. and collaborated on "A Profile of Child Care Settings." Before that, she served in various capacities within the same organization from 1977 to 1983, focusing on policy research on women and families.

From 1983 to 1988, Hofferth held roles at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), including Health Scientist Administrator and Expert in the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch. From 2012 through 2021, she served as the Principal Investigator on a NICHD-funded grant titled "Time Use Data for Health and Well-Being," a collaborative project with the Minnesota Population Center and the Centre for Time Use Research at University College London.

In 2012, she received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association Family Section. She has also served on the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, as Vice President of the Population Association of America, and as Chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on the Sociology of Children. and well-being; electronic communication; migration and immigrant adaptation; and public policy.

Her more recent studies have examined paternal involvement, revealing that fathers have devoted more time to childcare over recent decades, a trend aligned with broader shifts in gender roles.

Her findings also show that father involvement is positively associated with child health outcomes.

Hofferth is known for her contributions to measuring and analyzing child health and developmental outcomes. A significant focus of her research has been the use of time diary data to assess physical and sedentary activities among children. Notably, she directed a National Institutes of Health-funded project titled Measuring Children's Activity in its Social Context, which compared diary-based reports of children's physical activity to objective accelerometer data. and co-edited the Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research. Her work has further examined the reliability and validity of well-being indicators in national data sets, including the American Time Use Survey.

Hofferth has conducted research into trends in children's and adolescents’ use of electronic media, including computers and mobile phones. Her studies tracked the rapid increase in digital media engagement from the late 1990s through the 2000s. One of her key contributions was demonstrating that increased computer use was linked to improved verbal test scores, especially among girls and minority children.

Hofferth’s research on immigrant families has emphasized the academic and social integration of children from immigrant backgrounds. Her studies have shown that children of immigrants often demonstrate strong academic performance, sometimes surpassing their non-immigrant peers in reading and mathematics.

Hofferth has contributed to policy-relevant scholarship by applying demographic frameworks to issues such as childcare and maternal employment. Her early work examined how families select childcare arrangements and how paid childcare influences maternal employment patterns. By introducing population-based data and demographic methods into policy analysis, she helped clarify the role of childcare access in supporting working parents, especially mothers.

Honors and awards In 2012, Hofferth received the Distinguished Career Award from the Family section of the American Sociological Association for her research. Author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, with publications in such journals as Journal of Marriage and the Family, Population Research and Policy Review, Child Development, Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, Journal of Family Issues, Demography, Social Science Quarterly, Pediatrics, Work and Occupations, and Young Children. Director, Maryland Population Research Center. 2005: Research and Development Award, College of Health and Human Performance (now the School of Public Health), University of Maryland 1991–1992: Jensen Lectureship, jointly sponsored by the American Sociological Association and Duke University

Selected publications

Books authored

Books edited

Books chapters

Articles in Refereed Journals

.