John Eric Humphries named 2026 Sloan research fellow for early-career excellence

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named John Eric Humphries a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow, an honor that recognizes early-career scientists and scholars. An assistant professor of economics and affiliate of the Cowles Foundation and the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy, Humphries is one of three Yale faculty members honored this year for research accomplishments that position them as emerging leaders in their fields.

Humphries is a labor economist who studies how public policy shapes economic opportunity for children, families, and young adults. At the heart of his agenda is a focus on isolating events in childhood that directly affect later-in-life outcomes, and understanding whether and how policymakers can address these impacts with targeted interventions. This focus has led him to examine a wide range of policy areas, including housing, education, and criminal justice.

Past research has established that eviction, parental incarceration, and other shocks in childhood are associated with long-run outcomes such as reduced educational attainment, worse health, and diminished labor market prospects. Yet establishing whether these relationships are causal, rather than merely correlational, remains a central challenge.

Much of Humphries’ work develops quasi-experimental approaches to identify these causal effects. In one experiment on how educational choices and policies shape human capital and labor market outcomes, Humphries studied a universal pre-K admissions lottery and found that extended-day universal pre-K generates large and lasting earnings gains for parents. Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen lauded the research as “an important study” that demonstrates “the clear economic benefit of government investments in childcare programs.”

Humphries is widely recognized for opening up new areas for research by unearthing new data and developing novel data linkages. In one recent study, datasets that link eviction court records to school and Census data revealed how eviction affects children at home and at school. The research is the first to identify the causal impacts of eviction on children’s housing stability and educational progress and can help policymakers weigh costs and benefits of different tools to address housing affordability.

The fellowship recognizes “exceptional researchers whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of scientific leaders.” Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 award to support their research.

“John Eric confronts key questions about societal issues like eviction and incarceration as a true social scientist, giving us new empirical evidence informed by sharp analysis,” said Samuel Kortum, Chair of Yale's Department of Economics.

In the Q&A below, Humphries reflects on the questions that drive his research and the role of collaboration in his work.

Your work spans education, housing, and criminal justice. What questions are driving your research right now?

At a high level, I’m trying to understand how early experiences shape long-run economic trajectories. Many of the children who experience eviction or parental incarceration are growing up in disadvantaged environments. So the key question is whether those shocks themselves causally disrupt development, or whether they mostly reflect deeper disadvantage.

That distinction matters for policy. If these shocks directly change children’s educational or labor market paths, then preventing or mitigating them could generate large returns. Much of my work uses quasi-experimental and experimental research methods to isolate and understand these causal relationships. I also think a lot about how human capital formation is dynamic, so early disruptions can shape later opportunities in ways that compound.

Your recent work on eviction and children is especially timely given the crisis in affordable housing and changes to housing protections at the federal level. What did you find?

In joint work with Robert Collinson, Deniz Dutz, Nicholas Mader, Daniel Tannenbaum, and Winnie van Dijk, we built large-scale datasets linking eviction court records to administrative education and Census data to study these questions.

What we find is that eviction disrupts children’s schooling. Kids are more likely to switch schools, be absent from classes, and engage with homeless shelters. We also find evidence that eviction reduces high school graduation rates, likely through these school disruptions.

Now we’re studying the longer-run consequences: whether those educational disruptions translate into differences in earnings, housing stability, or criminal justice involvement later in life. That’s essential for understanding the full social costs of eviction.

Is there a project you’re especially excited about right now?

Overall, most of my research continues to examine how policy shapes intergenerational mobility, focusing on topics in housing, education, and criminal justice. Current new projects include a large-scale RCT evaluating cash grants for homeless families, work on how incarceration affects family formation and children’s outcomes, and work assessing the impacts of eviction on future criminal justice involvement.

"John Eric brings an unusually strong combination of analytic rigor and policy relevance, working across multiple methodological approaches and across topics as varied as housing eviction, pre-K education, and the returns to college." —Steven Berry, Faculty Director of the Tobin Center for Economic Policy

What does collaboration look like at Yale?

This kind of research is deeply collaborative. I’m coauthoring projects with several members of the department and faculty at other institutions. I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with such amazing researchers. Many of the projects also involve long-term partnerships with government or nonprofit agencies. These partnerships are what make much of my research possible.

At Yale, the Tobin Center, the Cowles Foundation, and the Data-Intensive Social Science Center also provide an important intellectual community, as well as support for data-intensive research and policy engagement. Being in this environment makes it easier to connect rigorous empirical work to real-world policy discussion.

Read the full press release from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation here.