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Postdoctoral Research Associate
Institute for Research on Poverty
University of Wisconsin - Madison
My research is motivated by an interest in how government programs help low-income families make ends meet. I specialize in experimental and quasi-experimental analysis of administrative and survey data to examine the relationships between public program participation and employment, health, and well-being and to inform evidence-based policymaking on public programs including child support, unemployment insurance, and SNAP.
As a postdoctoral research associate for the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, I conduct policy analysis on the child support program and specifically on child-support policy for supporting low-income parents. I recently served as a research associate on the federally funded evaluation of the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration . As part of the CSPED evaluation team, I was involved with harmonizing and analyzing administrative data from multiple government agencies across eight states in order to test whether an alternative approach to child support collection, focused on employment, parenting, and enhanced child support services for noncustodial parents, could improve noncustodial parents’ contributions to their noncustodial children.
I am currently a co-investigator on a grant projected funded by the UConn RIDGE program to examine how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are related to maternal depression and children's health outcomes using administrative data for the Missouri Department of Social Services. This project builds on research that I began as a doctoral student at the University of Missouri, where I was a research assistant on a federally funded grant to better understand how the timing of SNAP benefit receipt is related to adult and child health.
As a part of my postdoctoral fellowship, I am engaged in independent research on the unemployment insurance (UI) program and its relationship to household poverty and material hardships.
Publications
Hodges, Leslie. “Do Female Occupations Pay Less but Offer More Benefits? ” Forthcoming in Gender & Society.
Hodges, Leslie. “Do Low-income Parents Who Receive Unemployment Insurance Pay More Child Support?” Forthcoming in Children & Youth Services Review. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104834.
Heflin, Colleen, Leslie Hodges, and Chinedum Ojinnaka. 2020. “Administrative Churn in SNAP and Healthcare Utilization Patterns.” Medical Care, 58, 33 – 37. doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0000000000001235.
Heflin, Colleen, Irma Arteaga, Leslie Hodges, Felix Ndashimye, and Matthew P. Rabbitt. 2019. “SNAP Benefits and Childhood Asthma.” Social Science and Medicine, 220, 203-211. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.11.001.
Arteaga, Irma, Colleen M. Heflin, and Leslie Hodges. 2018. “SNAP Benefits and Pregnancy-Related Emergency Room Visits.” Population Research and Policy Review, 37(6), 1031-1052. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-018-9481-5.
Hodges, Leslie. 2018. “Who is covered by Unemployment Insurance?” Research in Applied Economics, 10 (3). doi: https://doi.org/10.5296/rae.v10i3.13373.
Heflin, Colleen M., Leslie Hodges, and Peter Mueser. 2017. “SNAP Benefits and Emergency Room Visits for Hypoglycemia.” Public Health Nutrition, 20 (7), 1314-1321. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980016003153
Heflin, Colleen M., Leslie Hodges, and Andrew London. 2016.“TAPped Out: A Study of the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program.” in The Civilian Lives of US Veterans, Volume 2: Issues and Identities. Louis Hicks, Eugenia L. Weiss, and Jose Coll, eds.
Research in Progress
Leslie Hodges, Daniel R. Meyer, and Maria Cancian. “What Happens When the Amount of Child Support Due is a Burden? Revisiting the Relationship between Child Support Orders and Child Support Payments”
Leslie Hodges and Fei Men. “Do Unemployment Insurance Benefits Reduce Poverty and Material Hardships?” Hear the podcast: https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/leslie-hodges-on-unemployment-insurance-and-material-hardships/
Lonnie Berger, Maria Cancian, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, and Daniel R. Meyer. “Barriers to Child Support Payment.”
Maria Cancian, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, and Daniel R. Meyer. “Doing What They Can? Low-income Fathers Providing Informal Support to their Nonresident Children.”
Irma Arteaga, Colleen Heflin, and Leslie Hodges. “Does Maternal Depression Caused by Food Insufficiency Influence Parenting Practices and Impact Infant Well-being? The Role of SNAP.”
Government and Other Reports
Leslie Hodges, Christopher Taber, and Jeffrey Smith. “Alternative Approaches to Income Imputation in Setting Child Support Orders.” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, October 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/alternative-approaches-to-income-imputation-in-setting-child-support-orders/
Leslie Hodges and Lisa Klein Vogel. “Recent Changes to State Child Support Guidelines for Low-income Noncustodial Parents.” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, August 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/recent-changes-to-state-child-support-guidelines-for-low-income-noncustodial-parents/
Lonnie Berger, Maria Cancian, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, and Daniel R. Meyer. “Barriers to Child Support Payment.” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, August 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/barriers-to-child-support-payment/
Leslie Hodges and Steven T. Cook. “The Use of Child Support Guidelines in Wisconsin: 2010 and 2013.” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, July 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/the-use-of-child-support-guidelines-in-wisconsin-2010-and-2013/
Leslie Hodges. “Comparison of Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) Participants with National and State Child Support Caseloads.” Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper, June 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/DP143919.pdf
Leslie Hodges, Daniel R. Meyer, and Maria Cancian. “How are Child Support Burdens Related to Child Support Payments, Compliance, and Regularity?” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, March 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/how-are-child-support-burdens-related-to-child-support-payments-compliance-and-regularity/
Maria Cancian, Molly Costanzo, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, and Daniel R. Meyer. “Potential Effects of a Self-support Reserve in Wisconsin.” Report to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, March 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/potential-effects-of-a-self-support-reserve-in-wisconsin/
Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, Lawrence M. Berger, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, Katherine Anne Magnuson, Lisa Klein Vogel, Melody Warring, Robert Wood, Quinn Moore, and April Yanyuan Wu. “Final Impact Findings from the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED): Technical Supplement.” Report to US Office of Child Support Enforcement, March 2019. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CSPED-Final-Impact-Technical-Supplement-2019.pdf
Maria Cancian, Angela Guarin, Leslie Hodges, and Daniel R. Meyer. “Characteristics of Participants in the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED)” Report to the US Office of Child Support Enforcement, December 2018. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/csped-final-characteristics-of-participants-report/
Grant Support
Co-investigator (Steven Cook, Co-investigator; Daniel R. Meyer, PI). “Use of Guidelines.” Child Support Policy Research Agreement with Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Total project costs $201,955 for January 2019 – December 2020.
Co-investigator (Lisa Klein Vogel, Co-investigator; Daniel R. Meyer, PI). “Low-income Guidelines.” Child Support Policy Research Agreement with Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Total project costs $174,514 for January 2019 – December 2020.
Co-investigator (Jeffrey Smith and Chris Taber, Co-investigators; Daniel R. Meyer, PI). “Income-Imputation in Setting Orders.” Child Support Policy Research Agreement with Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Total project costs $165,050 for January 2019 – December 2020.
Co-investigator (Irma Arteaga, PI; Colleen Heflin, Co-PI). “Does maternal depression caused by food insufficiency influence parenting practices and impact infant wellbeing? The role of SNAP”. Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE). Tufts/UConn RIDGE Program. Total project costs $40,000 for June 2019 – November 2020.
Principal Investigator. “Occupational Variation in Health Care Coverage.” Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship. MU Population, Education, and Health Center, University of Missouri. Total project costs $9,000 for January 2017 – May 2017.
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