Jenna Stearns

Jenna Stearns is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, specializing in labor, public, and health economics. Her work explores how family-friendly social policies—such as paid parental leave, sick leave mandates, and gender-neutral tenure-clock extensions—affect gender and socioeconomic inequality in labor markets, household decision-making, and health outcomes.

She earned her Ph.D. (2017) and M.A. (2012) in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her B.A. in Economics from Whitman College in 2010.

Stearns’s research agenda centers on the intersection of fertility choices and human-capital investment. She investigates whether and how paid leave programs improve welfare, reduce disparities in infant and maternal health, and reshape labor-market attachment for both women and men. Her findings reveal that well-designed leave policies can yield large societal benefits, while certain ostensibly gender-neutral reforms may inadvertently hinder women’s career trajectories.

Across her publications—ranging from Journal of Health Economics to the American Economic Review—a clear trend emerges: rigorous quasi-experimental analyses of administrative data to quantify policy impacts on employment, productivity, family structure, and inequality. Topics span breastfeeding promotion, paternal leave-sharing, COVID-19 gendered academic disruptions, and the long-run consequences of Britain’s maternity-leave reforms.

While no specific scientific awards are listed, her work is frequently cited in policy debates on paid family leave in the United States.

Stearns teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in labor economics at UC Davis; no individual student names, grant amounts, or laboratory affiliations are disclosed in the provided materials.