Maria Cancian is Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work and an Affiliate and former Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research considers the relationship between public policies and changes in marriage, fertility, employment and family well-being. Ongoing projects consider the implications of multiple-partner fertility for family organization and policy, as well as the interactions of the incarceration, child welfare, and child support systems. She is Principal Investigator, with Daniel R. Meyer, of the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration Evaluation.

Javier Rodriguez S. has been a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at UW-Madison since 2013. His work focuses on inequality, mobility and redistribution in various political economic contexts in Europe, the US and Latin America. At COWS, he mainly provides data management and analysis for various projects on labor market dynamics, occupations and industries. He received his undergraduate degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Ecuador, where he is from. Before joining the PhD program at Wisconsin, he completed an MS in Rural Sociology, Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University.