Marta Tienda’s research focuses on race and ethnic differences in various metrics of social inequality – ranging from poverty and welfare to education and employment – to address how ascribed attributes acquire their social and economic significance.
Through various studies of immigration, population diversification and concentrated poverty, Tienda has documented social arrangements and life course trajectories that both perpetuate and reshape socioeconomic inequality. Recently, she completed a decade-long study about the effectiveness of social policy in broadening access to higher education.
Currently Tienda is developing two research initiatives about age and immigration. One is a comparative study of child migration in traditional and new immigrant nations; the second focuses on late-age immigration to the United States.
