Research Scientist
Areas of Expertise: program evaluation, welfare reform, welfare-to-work, general quantitative analysis and statistical inference
Dr. Daniel Schroeder is a Research Scientist at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in rigorous, policy-focused evaluations of human services programs, with a sustained emphasis on child support and child care. His work blends experimental or quasi-experimental design, probabilistic matching, regorous analysis of large administrative datasets, and accessible tools that help agencies translate evidence into practice.
In child support, Dr. Schroeder served as Principal Investigator for the recently completed 2025 Texas Child Support Guidelines Review, leading an evidence-based update that recommends a graduated support schedule, a low-income self-support reserve, and a parenting-time adjustment formula. He developed multiple online calculators—including an income-shares model and a custodial-parent-income-unknown tool—to illustrate guideline performance under varied family scenarios. Earlier child support research includes an evaluation of Texas’ Integrated Child Support System (automatic enrollment “nudge”) and the nationally recognized Noncustodial Parent Choices workforce program, which demonstrated increased employment and payment rates among low-income noncustodial parents. His broader contributions examine the limited reach of the child support system, fairness of awards, and practical reforms that improve compliance with orders while supporting family well-being.
In child care, Dr. Schroeder co-leads the Texas Child Care Market Rate Survey, a long-running collaboration for the Texas Workforce Commission done with research partners at the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing. The 2025 survey integrates statewide provider data and administrative records to estimate child care rates across child age groups, track geographic price variation, and measure access (including non-traditional hours) and quality indicators such as Texas Rising Star and national accreditation. Complementing this, the 2025 version of his Cost of Quality Price Modeling provides empirically grounded calculators that connect staffing, wages and benefits, curriculum and assessment practices, and certification/accreditation to the marginal price of quality care in centers—highlighting wage and benefits as primary drivers and clarifying how geography shapes affordability.
Dr. Schroeder’s broader portfolio over the years has included multi-state analyses of unemployment insurance and SNAP through the ADARE partnership; assessments of workforce development initiatives; and studies of data quality and local investments in workforce systems. Earlier work at the Ray Marshall Center encompassed a Child Care Needs Assessment, the Workforce Data Quality Initiative, and a Higher Education Capacity Survey, among others.
He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Social Psychology, with a minor in Statistics, and is committed to building practical, data-driven tools that improve outcomes for children and families..
(Updated January 2026)