Research

Overview

Wealth inequality is among the defining trends of the U.S. economy, yet most research on how family wealth shapes children’s development relies on net worth, a single composite number that conceals the distinct, sometimes opposing, roles of what families own and what they owe. My research unpacks that composite.

My dissertation drew on longitudinal data following more than 7,000 young adults over 24 years (NLSY79 and its Child and Young Adult cohort) to examine how parental assets and debts across three periods of childhood relate to fifteen young adult outcomes spanning education, economic wellbeing, mental health, behavior, and family formation. Three findings anchor this work. First, assets and debts are qualitatively distinct predictors, and treating them as a single net figure obscures how each operates. Second, timing matters: early-childhood wealth was linked to behavioral outcomes, middle childhood to mental health, and adolescence to educational, economic, and family formation outcomes. Third, young adults’ own wealth accumulation is a central pathway through which childhood economic conditions carry forward — and assets and debts persist across generations more strongly than net worth itself.

This work extends an earlier research program in health economics: before studying wealth and child development, I spent a decade examining how health, poverty, and inequality interact in transition economies, in research supported by the Vienna Institute of International Economic Studies and the Global Development Network and in policy work with the World Bank, WHO, and the World Economic Forum.

Selected peer-reviewed publications

Miller, P., Podvysotska, T., Jones, E., Hanson, J. L., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2026). How family assets and debts relate to children’s achievement and behavior problems across development. Social Development, 35(1), e70033. doi:10.1111/sode.70033

Miller, P., Elliott, L. E., Podvysotska, T., Ptak, C., Duong, S., Fox, D., Coulanges, L., Libertus, M., Bachman, H. J., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2023). Toddler home math environment: Triangulating multi-method assessments in a U.S. sample. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1105569. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1105569

Miller, P., Podvysotska, T., Betancur, L., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2021). Wealth and child development: Differences in associations by family income and developmental stage. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(3), 154–174. doi:10.7758/rsf.2021.7.3.07

Earlier work in health economics, poverty, and inequality (published under Podvysotska and Podvysotskaya) includes peer-reviewed articles and working papers with wiiw, GDN, and DIW Berlin, and Ukraine’s National Competitiveness Reports (2012, 2013) produced with the World Economic Forum. A complete list appears in my CV.

Selected presentations

Podvysotska, T. (2024, December). Applying DDML (double/debiased machine learning) in R and Stata: A use case from NLSY data on parental wealth and children’s developmental outcomes. Invited methods talk, CAMeL, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh.

Podvysotska, T., Miller, P., Hanson, J., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2023, March). Assets & debts and child development: Main effects and developmental differences. Paper presented at the SRCD Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.

Betancur, L., Miller, P., Podvysotska, T. (presenter), & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2021, April). The role of wealth components in shaping children’s academic and behavioral outcomes. Paper presented at the SRCD Biennial Meeting (virtual).