Current Research Projects
- Equity-Focused Policy Research: Building Evidence on Access to Early Care & Education for Low-Income Families (Child Care Equity Study, CCES). Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Co-Principal Investigators Julia Henly and David Alexander.
- Child Care Providers Responding to COVID-19. Supplemental study of the Child Care Equity Study. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Co-Principal Investigators Julia Henly and David Alexander.
- Fulfilling the promise of early education and care: Making child care a true Two-Gen support. Urban Institute’s Low Income Working Families Initiative, funded by Annie E. Casey Foundation. With Gina Adams.
- How Child Care and Early Education Supply in Chicago Shapes Latino Parents' Child Care Decisions. University of Chicago and Chapin Hall Joint Research Award. With Marci Ybarra, Julie Spielberger, Erin Rapoport, & Aida Pacheco
- Determinants of Subsidy Stability and Child Care Continuity in Illinois and New York. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Care Research Partnership Grant. Grant Nos. 90YE0133 & 90YE0151-01-00.
- The Impact of Precarious Work Schedules on Early Childhood Health. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. With Michele Kilpatrick & Julio López Varona
- Precarious Work Schedules Among Early Career Adults. Russell Sage Foundation. With Susan Lambert
Julia Henly is a Professor in the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, where she is the Deputy Dean for Research and Faculty Development and the co-director of the Employment Instability, Family Well-being, and Social Policy Network (EINet). Henly is a 2018 Society for Social Work and Research Fellow, a 2016 Interdisciplinary Research Leadership Program Fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a 2016 Distinguished Fellow of the William T. Grant Foundation. She is also a longstanding member of the steering committee of the US/DHHS Administration for Children and Families' Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium.
Henly’s scholarship advances understanding of the economic and caregiving strategies of low-income families, with particular attention to the prevalence and consequences of volatile and unpredictable work schedules, the impact of parental work schedules on children's care arrangements, and how well child care subsidies and other public benefits serve low-income families. She is currently the principal investigator of a multi-year, mixed-methods study in Illinois and New York that examines how child care subsidy program parameters, provider characteristics and employment circumstances contribute to (in)stability in child care subsidy use; and in turn, how patterns of subsidy use shape low-income families’ access to high quality and stable subsidized arrangements. Henly is also co-PI of a qualitative study in two Chicago neighborhoods that investigates how child care density contributes to parental child care decision making and co-PI of a participatory action research project in Bridgeport CT that investigates how parental labor market experiences impact their children's daily experiences, including opportunities for participation in early education. Her research on precarious employment, joint with Susan Lambert, includes several survey, field experimental, and qualitative studies of the prevalence and consequences of unpredictable and variable work schedules on worker and family outcomes, with particular focus on low-wage, hourly employment contexts. In other work, Henly has investigated questions related to the contribution of public assistance and informal social support to material hardship and family well-being.
Henly's scholarship has received generous funding from federal government agencies and private foundations and has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, such as Social Service Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Marriage and Family, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Social Work Research, Children and Youth Services Review, and Journal of Social Issues, as well as several edited book volumes.
Professor Henly received her B.A. in Psychology and Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.S.W. (Policy and Planning) and Ph.D. in Social Work and Social Psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Chicago, she was Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles.