Robert Nathenson

Robert Nathenson is a Senior Researcher at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), with more than 10 years of experience applying rigorous econometric techniques to applied policy questions. He focuses on social mobility and financial and behavioral decisionmaking in the postsecondary and K-12 education settings. Nathenson won and co-leads a dynamic student loan debt microsimulation project, which examines students’ loan borrowing repayment decisions and behavior. He has also designed and fielded a 6,000 respondent survey of Pennsylvanian families to understand households’ financial knowledge, beliefs about college saving, and college savings patterns using extant administrative data. His work has also focused on questions of access, persistence, debt, and mobility for minority and low-income populations. Recent work includes joint research with CMSI on income mobility at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions, evaluating the impact of the Pennsylvania Treasury’s Keystone Scholars Program, and examining how a substantive redefining of Hispanic Serving Institutions influences Hispanics’ application and enrollment decisions. Nathenson completed his postdoctoral work at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economicsat the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. and a Master’s in Applied Math and Statistics from Johns Hopkins University, where he was an Institute of Education Sciences predoctoral fellow. He also holds a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in History and American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.