Harold Toro is associate research director for the Instituto de la Juventud, a Puerto Rico think tank focused on childhood poverty. During his visit with the Kellogg Institute, he will undertake research on the consequences for social stratification of informal vs. formal employment, as proxied by the use of written contracts. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Berkeley, and spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His most salient peer reviewed publications examine the impact of generational differences in education on labor market outcomes such as occupational status, earnings, and labor force participation, the long-term consequences for social mobility of industrialization policy in emerging economies, and the determinants of the reproduction of intergenerational inequality.
Dr. Toro has over twenty years of experience in research and teaching, with a primary focus on social mobility and inequality. He has worked as director of research, principal investigator, and as technical advisor for think tanks and institutes focused on social and economic and policy, focusing on development, both domestically, as well as in emerging economies. In these various roles he has overseen the production of surveys related to household finances, led USAID-funded projects related to education and to financial sustainability in higher education, and worked on evaluations of USAID programs related to scholarship opportunities in higher education in developing countries. He has worked collaboratively in international and interdisciplinary teams in academia, with international research organizations and with development agencies. He is fluent in Spanish and English, and proficient in French.