Laura Betancur is a research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute. She focuses on the public programs that support the well-being of low-income children, such as Head Start, state-provided prekindergarten, and the child care subsidy system.
Before joining Urban, Betancur was a postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University, where she used Iowa’s Integrated Data System for Decision Making to identify patterns of child care use among low-income families and to assess the potential benefits of receiving multiple public child care services.
Betancur has a BA in psychology from Universidad the Antioquia in Colombia, an MA in psychology from Los Andes University, and an MS and PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Pittsburgh.
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