As a family sociologist, Joanna Pepin studies inequality as it is woven through couple and family relations. Her research examines trends in attitudes and behaviors related to the distribution of resources within families, such as who does the housework, who works for pay, and how couples share (or don’t share) earnings and family responsibilities. Another research stream explores how historical time and place contribute to gender inequality within families and the growing divergence in outcomes among women.
Her research has appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family and Demography and her research has been covered by news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, and The Guardian. With support from the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, funded by the National Science Foundation, she devised a novel survey experiment to collect the first nationally representative sample of U.S. adults’ attitudes about income sharing in families.