Laura Lein

Dean and Collegiate Professor of Social Work

Laura Lein

Degrees

  • BA, Sociology/ Anthropology, 1969, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA;
  • MA, Social Anthropology, 1970, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA;
  • PhD, Social Anthropology, 1973, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

BioSketch

Laura Lein is dean of the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Formerly professor of social work and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), she was a respected researcher and teacher from 1985 to 2008. She has served as principal investigator on multiple grants on poverty, family and women's issues, and impoverished populations in Texas.

Dr. Lein directed the Women's Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin for two terms, from 1987 to 1991, where she coordinated interdisciplinary curriculum, fund development, and new programs. She was also director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women from 1981 to 1985 and director of an interdisciplinary project on work, family interaction, and child development at the Center for the Study of Public Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1973 to 1977.

She has served on boards of many organizations, including the United Way of Texas Child Care Working Group and the National Academy of Sciences Research Council Committee on Child Development Research and Public Policy.

Dr. Lein graduated from Harvard with a doctorate in social anthropology. Her work has concentrated on the interface between families in poverty and the institutions that serve them. She is author of nine books on welfare, health care, children, and families, including Poor Families in America's Health Care Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2006), coauthored with Ronald Angel and Jane Henrici.


Personal Information
Email leinl@umich.edu
Mailbox  1
 Location
Room: 4728 SSWB
Phone: (734) 764-5347
Fax: (734) 764-9954
 University of Michigan
School of Social Work
1080 S. University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Selected Publications

Lein, L. (2007). [Review of the book Ordinary poverty: A little food and cold storage]. Contemporary Sociology, 36(1). 44-45.
Lein, L., & Schexnayder, D. (with Douglas, K., & Schroeder., D.). (2007). Life after welfare: Reform and the persistence of poverty. University of Texas Press.
Angel, R. J., Angel, J. L., & Lein, L. (2007). The health-care safety net for Mexican-origin families. In D. R. Crane & T. B. Heaton (Eds.), Handbook of families and poverty (pp. 395-410). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Angel, R., Lein, L. & Henrici, J. (2006). Poor families in America's health care crisis. Cambridge University Press.
Angel, R., & Lein, L. (2006). Living on a poverty income: The role of non-governmental agencies in the scramble for resources. Journal of Law & Policy. 20, 75-99. Washington University.
Henrici, J., Angel, R., & Lein, L. (2006). Single mothers, low-wage jobs, and the growing health care gap. In B. Arrighi & D. J. Maume, Jr. (Eds.), Child poverty in America today. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Angel, R., & Lein, L. (2006). The myth of self-sufficiency in health. In J. Henrici (Ed.), Doing without: Women and work after welfare reform. University of Arizona Press.
Lein, L., Benjamin, A., McMannus, M., & Roy, K. (2006). When work doesn't work: Mothers in low income jobs. In J. Henrici (Ed.), Doing without: Women and work after welfare reform. University of Arizona Press.
Lein, L., Bell, H., & Angel, R. (2006). The importance of selection factors: Evaluating the impact of employment on family well-being in families transitioning from welfare to work. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 13(1), 43-61.
Lein, L., Douglas, K., & Murphy, K. (2006). U.S.-Mexico border families' responses to a U.S. poverty program: Making a living on the U.S. side of the border. (Respuesta de familias norteamericanas-mexicanas al programa de pobreza de Estados Unidos: Viviendo en el lado norteamericano de la frontera.) Revista Trabajo Social.
Murphy, K., Lein, L., Brabeck, K. (2006). Cultural and structural contexts of domestic violence for Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant women. (Contextos culturales y estructurales de la violencia domTstica de mujeres MTxico-Americanas y Mexicanas inmigrantes) Universidad Aut=noma de Nuevo Le=n.
Lein, L. (2005). Barriers to self-sufficiency: Are wages and welfare enough? In J. D. Berrick & B. Fuller (Eds.), Good parents or good workers? How policy shapes families' daily lives (pp. 19-33). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Lein, L. Benjamin, A., McMannus, M., & Roy, K. (2005). Economic roulette: When is a job not a job? Community, Work, and Family, 8(4), 359-378.
Burton, L., Lein, L., & Kolak, A. (2005). The walls of Jericho: Health and mothers' employment in low income families. In S. M. Bianchi, L. M. Casper, & R. B. King (Eds.), Work, family, health, and well-being. Erlbaum Press.