Leadership, Faculty

Heather Hill

Professor; Ph.D. Program Director

How poverty, low-wage employment, and the social safety net affect the health and wellbeing of families and children.

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Heather Hill

Heather D. Hill is a Professor and Director of the PhD Program in Public Policy and Management at the Evans School. Her research examines how public and workplace policies influence family economic circumstances and child wellbeing in low-income families. She brings an inter-disciplinary lens to these topics, integrating theoretical and methodological insights from developmental psychology, economics, and sociology. Hill’s recent research projects include:

The implications for children of growing inequality in income and wealth. In multiple projects alone and in collaboration, Hill has studied how income level and variability, and family wealth inequality affect children.

Evaluation of the Washington State Paid Family and Medical Leave program: Hill has led multiple studies related to the WA Paid Leave program, funded by the Perigee Fund and the Washington Department of Health and the Washington Employment Security Department. A recently completed study surveyed and interviewed parents in Washington who had used the program for medical leave (own health) or family care leave (a family member’s health). An ongoing study is using administrative records and interviews to examine how eligibility for job protection affects worker take-up of the paid leave benefits.

Hill received a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2007. She also has an MPP from the University of Michigan and a BA in Political Science from the University of Washington. Hill spent three years as a research analyst at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. in Washington, DC., and two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ivory Coast.

Hill is a faculty affiliate of the Center for an Informed Public, the Center for Firearm Injury Prevention, the West Coast Poverty Center, the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and the Center for Statistics and Social Sciences at the University of Washington and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

In her spare time, she reads, gardens, hikes, and eats oysters.

Available for Ph.D. advising

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