SPECIAL EVENT | Reproductive realities: Are families achieving their desired size?
This half-day symposium on fertility brings together distinguished leaders from interdisciplinary fields—including economics, demography, epidemiology, and sociology—for a discussion on the current reproductive realities in the United States. This special event is co-sponsored by Harvard Chan School’s Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence (MCH) and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Please join us for this hybrid event (you may attend either in person or via Zoom) to explore:
- Do men and women have the number of children they want and when they want them?
- What economic, social, health‑related, and structural factors shape the gap between desired and actual fertility?
- What is the role of maternal and child health in advancing research and practice?
Speakers
The symposium will feature these four scholars from multiple disciplines to lead the discussion of whether people can have the children they want when they want them, what forces shape gaps between desired and actual fertility, and how maternal and child health can advance research, policy, and practice.
2023 Nobel laureate; Samuel W. Morris University Professor, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts & Sciences, and Henry Lee Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Claudia Goldin
Dr. Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist. Her research has fundamentally shaped understanding of women’s labor market outcomes, tracing the long-run evolution of female labor force participation, the gender wage gap, and the interaction of career, family, education, and technological change. Much of her work uses economic history to explain contemporary labor-market inequalities. Goldin was awarded the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes,” becoming the third woman and first solo female laureate in economics. She has also received honors such as the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, the Nemmers Prize in Economics, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the 2026 Talcott Parsons Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Goldin is the author of numerous influential books and articles, including Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women and Career & Family: Women’s Century‑Long Journey toward Equity.
Associate Professor of Epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health
Alison Gemmill
Dr. Gemmill is a nationally recognized expert in perinatal epidemiology and fertility. Her research leverages large-scale data and natural experiments to understand how structural and political determinants—such as policies, economic shocks, and social stressors—shape maternal, infant, and reproductive health outcomes, including preterm birth, fetal loss, and maternal complications. Her scholarship also addresses U.S. fertility patterns, contraceptive use, and reproductive goals, with current projects examining the determinants and consequences of recent fertility declines. Gemmill co-leads the U.S.-based Human Fertility Database, funded by the National Science Foundation, which will enable researchers to investigate the multifactorial drivers of period and cohort fertility change across time and place.
Director, Carolina Population Center, UNC Chapel Hill
Karen Guzzo
Dr. Guzzo is an expert on trends and differentials in U.S. fertility preferences and fertility behaviors, such as delayed childbearing and childlessness, fertility decision-making, nonmarital fertility, and childbearing across partnerships. Using survey data and vital statistics data, her work takes a reproductive career approach, which grounds childbearing behaviors both in the larger life course and in relation to individuals’ past and future childbearing goals and behaviors. Her recent work focuses on how uncertainty is associated with Americans’ childbearing plans and goals.
Additional areas of research consider the challenges of measuring family behaviors. Surveys typically include questions that ask individuals about their past childbearing, cohabitation, and marriage behaviors and their future plans, yet issues of question wording, respondent recall, and social desirability may influence the reliability and accuracy of people’s reports. Guzzo’s work has delved extensively into how demographers measure concepts such intended fertility or identify different family forms such as stepfamilies or families that span households.
Additional areas of research consider the challenges of measuring family behaviors. Surveys typically include questions that ask individuals about their past childbearing, cohabitation, and marriage behaviors and their future plans, yet issues of question wording, respondent recall, and social desirability may influence the reliability and accuracy of people’s reports. Guzzo’s work has delved extensively into how demographers measure concepts such intended fertility or identify different family forms such as stepfamilies or families that span households.
Centennial Commission Professor of Liberal Arts in the Department of Sociology, and Research Associate in the Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
Jennifer Glass
Dr. Glass has published over 60 articles and books on work and family issues, remote work, gender stratification in the labor force, mother’s employment and mental health, gender integration in the STEM labor force, and religious conservatism and women’s economic attainment. Her most recent projects explore the intensifying demands on U.S. mothers to financially support their children and their capacity to meet those demands, focusing on wages and working conditions in male and female dominated jobs. Glass is also researching whether and when governmental work-family policies improve or undermine parents’ and children’s mental and physical health, and the role of work-family reconciliation policies in mothers’ disadvantage in the labor market.