Associate Professor, Sociology
Faculty Affiliate, Center for Aging and Policy Studies
CAPS Biography:
I study social inequality and how it comes about. How do families come to have certain bundles of resources? How is inequality passed down from parents to children? How does it change over time? How does it evolve as people age across the life course?
Substantively, my work focuses on educational inequalities; health disparities (smoking, obesity, breastfeeding); early childhood investments (breastfeeding, reading to young children); gender and work; and how family processes such as marriage and fertility inform inequality across the life course and generations, including inequalities in health. My research is distinctive for bringing demography to bear on the study of inequality in order to capture the multidimensionality and dynamics of inequality and showing how different resources are inter-related both across the life course and generations. My work falls under the CAPS themes of “health and wellbeing” and “family and intergenerational supports.” My research also addresses CAPS’ cross-cutting theme of how low socioeconomic status shapes health outcomes at both the individual and family level.
