She is the former co-director of the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics and founding Director of its Child Development Supplement.
Thesis: "Cooperation and Competition in Peasant Communities" (Chairman: Henry A. Landsberger) She received her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in August 1976.
Dissertation: "Modeling the Contraceptive Behavior of Couples: An Exchange Approach" (Chairman: J. Richard Udry) Sandra Hofferth, Professor in the Department of Family Science at the University of Maryland, is a former director of the Maryland Population Research Center (2008–2012) and a former co-director of the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
Besides her deep knowledge of large national databases, she has expertise in measurement, methods, and structural equation modeling.
In the public policy area, Hofferth examined the impact of U.S. parental leave statutes on the employment of new mothers after childbirth in a paper with S. Curtin (Work and Occupations 2006).
Hofferth's work on welfare reform and public policy over the past decade is summarized in the Spring 2002 issue of Contexts: Understanding People in their Social Worlds, a journal of the American Sociological Association.