< <

Public Affairs Faculty

Maureen A. Pirog
Professor and Co-Director, Indiana University Institute for Family and Social Responsibility

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1981

Prof. Pirog received a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Boston College in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. After the completion of her Ph.D., she taught in the Finance Department of the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty in the School of Public and Environment Affairs at Indiana University in 1983. In her research on the employment experiences of low income youths and adults, Dr. Pirog has collaborated with staff at institutions such as The Brookings Institution, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Dr. Pirog is a member of the Technical Advisory Board and a researcher on the Abt Associates Inc. and Urban Institute’s evaluation of the Indiana welfare reforms. Dr. Pirog is the co-director of the Institute for Family and Social Responsibility, a multi-disciplinary, multi-campus institute that provides research expertise and technical assistance to state and national social service organizations.

Prof. Pirog’s current teaching and research emphases include child poverty with emphasis on adolescent parenting and child support enforcement. Prof. Pirog’s work in these areas is highly visible outside the academy. Her articles on the earnings capabilities of adolescent fathers in early adulthood and state legislated child support guidelines were both incorporated into the Clinton welfare reform proposals. State and U.S. Congressional committees frequently refer to her studies of fairness and equity in the determination of amounts of child support awards. Prof. Pirog is one of a handful of academics invited to be a member of the Research Committee of the National Child Support Enforcement Association. As a national expert on child support, Prof. Pirog has been invited by the U.S. General Accounting Office to help shape their research agenda in this area and has been a reviewer of their reports. She has also been an invited speaker in conferences around the country organized by academic organizations, state social services agencies, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her four-year study of adolescent fathers, funded by the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the first comprehensive, national study of this population. Her work on the ability of adolescent fathers to pay child support has been the subject of U.S. Congressional testimony and has garnered the attention of the national press.

In addition to her commitment to timely and policy-relevant research, Prof. Pirog maintains a serious commitment to providing service to her profession and Indiana University. She is a member of the editorial boards of Youth & Society and Family Relations and serves as an article, book, and grant reviewer for twenty-one other journals and organizations including the Patton Foundation at Indiana University. She has served as the elected secretary of the School of Public and Environmental’s Affairs Policy and Budget Committees. She was selected to lead the Bloomington campus team for the IU Summer Institute and was one of five IU faculty members selected to participate in the 1997-98 Academic Leadership Program sponsored by the Committee for Institutional Cooperation. In addition to these activities, Prof. Pirog is dedicated to the students of Indiana University. She has served as an adviser for graduate and/or undergraduate students since 1984. In 1995, Prof. Pirog received SPEA’s graduate teaching award.

Recent Publications

Alfred Tai-kei Ho and Maureen A. Pirog. 1999. "Do States Respond to Economic Incentives? Federal-State Child Support Financing Policies," in Jay White (ed.), Research in Public Administration. (Greenwood, CT: JAI Press).

Maureen A. Pirog, Marilyn Klotz, and Katharine V. Byers. 1997. "Interstate Comparisons of Child Support Awards Using State Guidelines." The Green Book (Washington, D.C.: Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, GPO).

Maureen A. Pirog and Chris Magee. 1997. "High School Completion: The Influence of Schools, Families and Adolescent Parenting." Social Science Quarterly. 78(3): 710-724.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good and Lydia Amerson. 1997. "The Long Arm of Justice: The Potential for Seizing the Assets of Child Support Obligors." Family Relations 46(1): 47-54.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good. 1996. Book review of Two Generation Programs for Families in Poverty: A New Intervention Strategy in Sheila Smith (ed.), Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation in Family Relations. 45(4): 477-478.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good and Patricia R. Brown. 1996. "Accuracy and Ambiguity in the Application of State Child Support Guidelines." Family Relations. 45(1): 3-10.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good. 1996. "The Education and Labor Market Outcomes of Adolescent Fathers." Youth and Society. 28(2): 236-262.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good. 1996. Book review of Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change, in Sheldon Danziger, Gary Sandefur, & Daniel Weinberg (eds.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press in Family Relations. 45(3): 354-355.

Maureen A. Pirog-Good. 1996. “Should it Take a Village to Raise a Child?” Indiana ALUMNI Magazine. (January/February): 64.