Nicholas J. Ainsworth

I am a fifth year PhD candidate in Education Policy at the University of California, Irvine. I study the factors that shape children's access to the supports they need to succeed in school and beyond and how policy can improve the delivery and effectiveness of those supports at scale.

I am particularly interested in how education systems navigate the challenges of supporting students with diverse needs and from different backgrounds through the ways they structure and operate educational programming. This has led me to study educational services such as special education, gifted education, and public pre-k with the goal of better understanding how education systems differentiate supports across students, who benefits from them, and how those supports can be improved.

In my dissertation work, I examine socioeconomic differences in the receipt of special education services and how different policy interventions shape who is identified for services and their subsequent educational outcomes. Beyond educational supports, I have also published work on the impacts of poverty reduction efforts, such as cash transfers, on children's short-term health outcomes as well as their long-term economic well-being. Across my work, I seek to understand how policy can reduce inequality by improving children's trajectories from early childhood through K-12 schooling and into adulthood.

My research is currently supported by the 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Previously, I was supported by a doctoral training grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. Prior to starting my PhD, I taught K-2 special education in Las Vegas, Nevada. I earned my MEd in Special Education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and my BS in Disability Studies and Political Science from Vanderbilt University.

I am on the job market for the 2026-2027 academic year.

News

Sep, 2026	I presented some of our team’s work on special education in Oregon to a group of legislators from the Education Working Group of the Oregon State Legislature.
Sep, 2026	Our paper Reducing Intergenerational Poverty is now published at Academic Pediatrics.
May, 2026	I was selected as a 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow for my project titled: The Effects of Special Education Policies at Scale: Identification Disparities and Student Achievement.
May, 2026	Our research on the relationship between family income and the receipt of special education services and Section 504 plans was featured in an article in The 74.
Mar, 2026	Our research on how identification for gifted and special education varies by family income was cited in Chalkbeat.

Selected publications

Acad. Pediatr.
Reducing Intergenerational Poverty

Nicholas J. Ainsworth, and Greg J. Duncan

Academic Pediatrics 2026

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How can the United States reduce the number of children in our country who, after growing up in families with incomes below the poverty line, remain poor as adults? This article summarizes key conclusions of a 2024 report issued by the Committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Policies and Programs to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty. The committee sought to identify evidence-based policies and programs directed at low-income children, their families, or their neighborhoods that could reduce children’s chances of remaining low-income as adults. The committee found direct evidence of success in affecting correlates of adult poverty (e.g., low educational attainment and earnings, poor health) for more than two dozen programs and policies addressing health; education; income and parental employment; housing; and crime. Because we concentrate on interventions focused on child health, we include a brief discussion of the importance of the involvement of health care professionals in implementing policy changes resulting from the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB Act).
@article{ainsworth2026reducing, author = {Ainsworth, Nicholas J. and Duncan, Greg J.}, title = {Reducing Intergenerational Poverty}, journal = {Academic Pediatrics}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.1016/j.acap.2026.103423}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2026.103423}, scholar_query = {Reducing Intergenerational Poverty Nicholas J. Ainsworth Greg J. Duncan} }
JREE
The Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Workforce: Descriptive Evidence on Demographics and Turnover from Oregon

Aaron J. Ainsworth, Nicholas J. Ainsworth, Yujia Liu, and Emily K. Penner

Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 2026

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Early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) services for children with disabilities have expanded substantially across the U.S. over the past few decades, necessitating efforts to recruit and retain a qualified workforce to meet their needs. Despite widespread reports of staffing challenges in this sector, few contemporary studies provide large-scale evidence on this workforce. Using administrative data for all EI/ECSE employees in Oregon from 2008 to 2023, we provide longitudinal descriptive evidence on their composition, distribution, and stability. We show that the workforce has increased significantly, is growing more racially/ethnically diverse, and is more highly educated but less experienced than the state’s K-12 workforce. Turnover remained fairly constant during this period, with the exception of paraprofessionals and non-licensed staff whose retention steadily declined to historic lows. Finally, we show that staff are distributed somewhat inequitably throughout the state, with areas serving more low-income students having the highest child-staff ratios and fewer highly-educated teachers/interventionists. Together these analyses contribute the first longitudinal portrait of an EI/ECSE workforce, providing key insights into their staffing dynamics at scale.
@article{ainsworth2026early, author = {Ainsworth, Aaron J. and Ainsworth, Nicholas J. and Liu, Yujia and Penner, Emily K.}, title = {The Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Workforce: Descriptive Evidence on Demographics and Turnover from Oregon}, journal = {Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness}, year = {2026}, volume = {0}, number = {0}, pages = {1--32}, doi = {10.1080/19345747.2025.2611909}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2025.2611909}, scholar_query = {The Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Workforce Descriptive Evidence on Demographics and Turnover from Oregon Aaron J. Ainsworth Nicholas J. Ainsworth Yujia Liu Emily K. Penner Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness} }
JAMA Peds
Cash Transfers and Their Effect on Maternal and Young Children’s Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Greg J. Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, Alicia S. Kunin-Batson, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Nathan A. Fox, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Nicholas J. Ainsworth, Sarah R. Black, Jennifer Mize Nelson, Timothy D Nelson, Michael K. Georgieff, Debra Karhson, Lisa A. Gennetian, and Kimberly G. Noble

JAMA Pediatrics 2025

Abs Bib DOI Cited by -

Importance: Mothers and children in low-income households are more likely to experience worse mental and physical health than those from higher-income households. Objective: To determine the effect of 4 years of monthly unconditional cash transfers on the mental health of mothers with low-income and the physical health of mothers and children. Design, Setting, and Participants: This was a parallel-group, randomized clinical trial conducted from May 2018 to July 2023. Mother-infant dyads were recruited (May 2018-June 2019) from postpartum wards in 12 hospitals in 4 cities: Omaha, Nebraska; Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota; New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York, New York. Data were analyzed from September 2023 to February 2025. Interventions: Mothers were randomly assigned to receive either a high-cash gift (333 per month) or a low-cash gift (20 per month) on debit cards. The cash gifts continued for the first 6 years of their children’s lives. Data analyzed here were collected after 4 years of monthly transfers. Main Outcomes and Measures: Outcomes were preregistered and measured around the child’s fourth birthday. Maternal outcomes included depression, anxiety, and body mass index (BMI). Child outcomes included age- and sex-adjusted BMI percentile and maternal report of child health (overall health, times sick in the past year, and presence of chronic health conditions). Results: A total of 1000 mother-infant dyads (mean [SD] maternal age, 27.0 [5.8] years) were included in this study. Among those mothers, 400 were randomly assigned to receive the 333 high-cash gift and 600 received the 20 low-cash gift on debit cards. Data were available from 891 mother-child dyads. No statistically detectable group differences were found in maternal depressive symptoms (effect size [ES], 0.04; 95% CI, −0.08 to 0.17; P = .51), anxiety (ES, 0.12; 95% CI, −0.02 to 0.25; P = .09), or BMI (ES, −0.06; 95% CI, −0.21 to 0.09; P = .42). In addition, there were no statistically detectable group differences in child BMI percentile (ES, −0.03; 95% CI, −0.17 to 0.12; P = .73) or overall child health (ES, 0.08; 95% CI, −0.07 to 0.22; P = .30). Conclusions and Relevance: Monthly unconditional cash transfers totaling approximately $15 000 over 4 years to mothers with low incomes did not improve maternal mental health, maternal or child BMI, or maternal report of children’s health. These results could reflect the absence of causal connections between cash transfers and health, the possibility that impacts of early childhood income may not appear until later in life, or that an 18% increase in income is insufficient to overcome the structural vulnerabilities associated with poverty that contribute to health.
@article{duncan2025cash, title = {Cash Transfers and Their Effect on Maternal and Young Children’s Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial}, author = {Duncan, Greg J. and Magnuson, Katherine and Kunin-Batson, Alicia S. and Yoshikawa, Hirokazu and Fox, Nathan A. and Halpern-Meekin, Sarah and Ainsworth, Nicholas J. and Black, Sarah R. and Nelson, Jennifer Mize and Nelson, Timothy D and Georgieff, Michael K. and Karhson, Debra and Gennetian, Lisa A. and Noble, Kimberly G.}, journal = {JAMA Pediatrics}, volume = {179}, number = {8}, pages = {867--875}, doi = {10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.1612}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.1612}, year = {2025}, scholar_query = {Cash transfers and their effect on maternal and young children’s health: a randomized clinical trial} }