Kathy J. Myers

Kathy J. Myers
Name	Kathy J. Myers
Birth date	1968
Birth place	Seattle, Washington, United States
Fields	Sociology; Public Policy; Social Work
Workplaces	University of Washington; Columbia University; RAND Corporation
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University
Known for	Research on urban poverty, child welfare, homelessness, evidence-based policy
Awards	MacArthur Fellowship; Guggenheim Fellowship

Kathy J. Myers

Kathy J. Myers is an American social scientist whose work bridges sociology, public policy, and social work. Her career spans academic appointments at major research universities, policy analysis at think tanks, and advisory roles for municipal and federal agencies. Myers’s research focuses on urban poverty, child welfare systems, homelessness, and the translation of evidence into practice, producing influential studies that informed programs in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Early life and education

Myers was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in a family engaged with local civic institutions including the Seattle Public Library and neighborhood community centers. She attended Garfield High School (Seattle), where involvement in student government and volunteer work with United Way affiliates inspired interdisciplinary interests bridging social research and practice. Myers completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley with honors, studying under scholars connected to the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois and the tradition of urban ethnography associated with Jane Jacobs’s work on cities. She pursued graduate studies at Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in Social Policy where her dissertation examined foster care placement patterns in the context of landmark cases and statutes like the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980.

Academic and professional career

After doctoral work, Myers held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Russell Sage Foundation before joining the faculty at the University of Washington in the Department of Sociology and the School of Social Work. Her appointment involved collaborations with centers such as the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, as well as cross-appointments with public health units linked to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Myers later accepted a senior research position at the RAND Corporation where she led evaluation teams working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and municipal agencies in Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. She has been a visiting professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and a Fulbright Scholar affiliated with institutions in London and Toronto.

Myers has served on advisory boards for the Administration for Children and Families and the National Academy of Sciences panels on child welfare. She has testified before legislative committees in the United States Congress and the Washington State Legislature and contributed to expert working groups convened by the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Research and contributions

Myers’s scholarship integrates quantitative analysis of administrative datasets with qualitative fieldwork in shelters, child welfare agencies, and community organizations. Her studies of homelessness drew on longitudinal datasets produced by municipal agencies and national surveys such as the American Community Survey and the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients. In child welfare, her work traced the impact of policy reforms following judicial rulings in cases like Santosky v. Kramer and federal statutes including the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, showing disparities linked to race and neighborhood segregation patterns described by scholars following William Julius Wilson.

Her contributions include methodological innovations in causal inference for nonexperimental policy settings, building on techniques associated with researchers at the Institute for Research on Poverty and linking to estimation strategies popularized by scholars at MIT and Stanford University. Myers’s interdisciplinary projects connected academic theory with implementation: she collaborated with practitioners from National Association of Social Workers, shelter providers associated with Catholic Charities USA, and municipal departments modeled after Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Myers has influenced practice through evidence syntheses used by philanthropic organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and through toolkits adopted by local agencies modeled on frameworks developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Selected publications and works

- “Neighborhood Effects and Child Welfare Outcomes,” Journal of Urban Affairs; examines links between neighborhood disadvantage and foster care placements, engaging debates associated with Claude Fischer and Kathryn Edin. - “Pathways Out of Homelessness: Evidence from Longitudinal Administrative Data,” published with members from the City of New York and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; employs methods related to work at Harvard Kennedy School. - “Implementing Evidence-Based Interventions in Child Welfare Systems,” a monograph co-authored with researchers from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Brookings Institution. - “Causal Inference in Human Services Research,” chapter in an edited volume alongside scholars from Princeton University and Yale University. - Policy briefs for the Russell Sage Foundation and the Urban Institute on reducing racial disparities in foster care and scaling housing-first programs modeled on practices in Salt Lake City and Houston.

Awards and honors

Myers’s work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship for interdisciplinary research on urban inequality, a Guggenheim Fellowship for social science scholarship, and grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She received lifetime achievement and mentoring awards from the Society for Social Work and Research and the American Sociological Association’s Section on Poverty, and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Category:American sociologists Category:Living people