Moore, Kristin

Kristen Moore is a social psychologist who has been with Child Trends, Inc., since 1982, studying trends in child and family well-being, the effects of family structure and social change on children, the determinants and consequences of adolescent parenthood, the effects of welfare and welfare reform on children, fathers, and positive development.

Kristin Anderson Moore was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1948. She graduated as a National Merit scholar from Southwest High School in Minneapolis, where she met her future husband and life partner, Jeffrey Moore, also a social psychologist. Moore received her BA in sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1970 and her PhD from the University of Michigan in 1975. The University of Michigan was a training ground for fine survey researchers, psychologists, and population researchers in the 1970s. Others studying population studies at that time included Linda Waite, now at University of Chicago, as well as Bob Groves and Arland Thornton, who are both still affiliated with the University of Michigan. This was an activist period in American academia, seeding Moore's lifelong interest in social policy and the search for knowledge to inform social change.

In 1975, soon after graduating from Michigan, Moore moved to Washington, D.C., to work at the Urban Institute with Isabel Sawhill (now at Brookings), in the Women and Family Policy Program. Before the program disbanded in the 1980s, others who participated included Nancy Gordon (U.S. Census Bureau), June O'Neill (NYU), Steven Caldwell (Cornell), and Sandra Hofferth (University of Maryland). During [Page 734]this period, Moore won the first of many grants to study adolescent pregnancy and childbearing. Reflecting her ongoing interest in service, she volunteered as counselor in a family planning clinic, as well.

A nationally recognized expert on adolescent pregnancy and childbearing, Moore served on the National Academy of Sciences' panel on Work, Family and Community between 1980 and 1982, and on its panel on Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing between 1984 and 1986. She founded the Task Force on Effective Programs and Research of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. In 1991, Moore was selected to receive the Presidential Award from the National Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting.

In the early 1980s, the Urban Institute was blacklisted, and many of its researchers went to other organizations. In 1982, Moore moved to Child Trends, a research organization founded in 1979 by the Foundation for Child Development specifically to study trends in children's development. The mission statement says:

In 1982, Child Trends was a small organization, with founder Nicholas Zill as president and only a handful of staff. In 1992, Zill resigned to move to Westat. Moore became executive director in 1992 and president in 1997. Moore's ideas, academic credentials, and research skills plus economic prosperity led Child Trends to expand gradually through the 1990s, achieving a reputation as one of the nation's leading sources of credible data and high-quality research on children. Child Trends currently has staff consisting of 39 researchers and 8 support staff.

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