Biography
Donald J. Hernandez Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City
University of New York, received his B.A. in Sociology from the University
of Illinois, Urbana, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University
of California, Berkeley. He joined the faculty in September 2009.
His research focuses on historical and contemporary change in the lives
of children and families with particular attention to immigrants and
public policy. He also recently completed work on an alternative poverty
measure for the U.S. that overcomes many limitations of the current
official measure, and on research assessing the extent to which socioeconomic
disparities versus cultural differences can account low enrollment in
early education programs among Hispanic children in immigrant and native-born
families. He is currently using the Foundation for Child Development’s
Index of Child Well-Being (CWI) to explore disparities in child well-being
by race-ethnic and immigrant origins, and by socioeconomic status, and
he is conducting research on the links between early reading proficiency
and high school graduation.
Donald Hernandez is the author or editor of seven books and monographs including Success or Failure: Family Planning Programs in the Third World (Greenwood Press, 1984), America’s Children: Resources from Family, Government, and the Economy (Russell Sage Foundation, 1993), From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families (edited with Evan Charney, National Academy Press, 1998), Children of Immigrants, Health, Adjustment, and Public Assistance (National Academy Press, 1999), and Children in Immigrant Families in Eight Affluent Countries: Their Family, National, and International Context (with Suzanne Macartney and Victoria Blanchard, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2009). He also has authored more than 40 articles and chapters.
His early book, America’s Children: Resources from Family, Government, and Economy was the first national research using children as the unit of analysis to document the timing, magnitude, and reasons for revolutionary changes experienced by children since the Great Depression in family composition, parent’s education, father’s and mother’s work, and family income and poverty. Professor Hernandez recently completed research using Census 2000 and the American Community Survey 2005-2007 to produce about 140 indicators of children’s family and economic circumstances for various race-ethnic and immigrant groups by detailed country of origin for the U.S., the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 200 metropolitan areas. For his most recent monograph Children in Immigrant Families in Eight Affluent Countries: Their Family, National, and International Context Professor Hernandez led a team of scholars from eight countries to develop internationally comparable indicators from census and registration systems of child well-being across affluent countries for children in immigrant and native-born families.
Among his other activities, Professor Hernandez has served as an advisor for activities of the Advertising Council; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Center for Law and Social Policy; the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics; the Foundation for Child Development; the National Council of La Raza, the Division of Nutrition of the New York Department of Health; National Center for Children in Poverty; the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Population Reference Bureau; the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute; the Urban Institute; and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. He also has served on Committees of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, and given testimony or served as an invited speaker for numerous Congressional Hearings and Briefings.
To support his research, Professor Hernandez has been awarded as Principal Investigator grants with a total value of more than $750,000. He also has made more than 140 invited presentations at professional meetings, universities, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations across the United States and in Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, England, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and the Philippines.