Karen Chatfield’s research has focused on children’s outcomes across all dimensions, as well as on the ways in which US social programs and policies support the development of children in low-income immigrant and non-immigrant families.

Before joining the National Center for Children in Poverty, Chatfield worked at the Educational Alliance, where she served as principal investigator on the Settlement House American Research Plan (SHARP) Impact Study, a mixed-method investigation of social program receipt, community supports, and material hardship among NYC settlement house participants and staff both during and since the pandemic.

Chatfield received her PhD from the Columbia School of Social Work at Columbia University and earned an MA in quantitative methods in the social sciences at Columbia University.