Associate Vice Chancellor for Research in the Social Sciences and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School of Social Work, Lawrence Berger, is the Principal Investigator for the NICHD R01 “Improving Data Collection of Debt and Financial Strain to Assess Health Impacts of Economic Insecurity.” UWSC Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Sociology, Jennifer Dykema, is a co-Investigator. In recent decades, individual and household debt has played an increasingly important role in the dynamics of economic inequality and insecurity in the United States. However, limitations of current data impede scientific understanding of the role of indebtedness in reducing or exacerbating economic insecurity for low-income families. This project consists of a multi-pronged data collection and analysis effort aimed at building a stronger data infrastructure, more adequate and accurate measures of indebtedness, and best practices for analyzing various forms of indebtedness and their relation to economic hardship and financial strain for low-income families.