Center on Population Health and Aging
CPHA News
Fall 2007
Awards, Honors or Appointments
Paul Amato was awarded the position of Distinguished Professor, College of the Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University; received the 2006 Distinguished Career Award, American Sociological Association, Section on the Sociology of the Family; and was elected member of the Sociological Research Association.
Linda Wray was appointed to the editorial board, Journal of Aging and Health; is Listserv Manager, Section on Aging and the Life Course, American Sociological Association; is a member of the Program Committee, Behavioral and Social Sciences Section, 60th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America; and is the 2006-2009 Council Member-at-Large, Behavioral and Social Sciences Section, Gerontological Society of America.
New Grant Awards
Latent Growth Curve Models of Cognitive Aging
Duane Alwin and Linda Wray received funding for three years from NIH/NIA to project investigate the linkage between age-related cognitive change and indicators of health, health behaviors and disability in a set of nationally representative samples of community dwelling respondents in the U.S. population. The data used were obtained from the 1992-2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) national panel study of men and women in birth cohorts born pre-1900 through 1954. This project is a continuation of an R01 focusing on age-gradients, cohort effects, and the role of schooling for measures of cognitive status assessed in the HRS samples over several waves.
Geriatric Education Center Awarded
Melissa Hardy is co-director of a new Geriatric Education Center. The director of the center is Richard Schulz, University of Pittsburgh; Albert J. Finestone, Temple University, is also co-director of the center. The researchers' primary responsibilities will be to develop curricula that provide mental health training for interdisciplinary geriatric health care providers throughout the state; develop curricula that enhance cultural sensitivity and health literacy of geriatric health care providers; develop communication tools that facilitate discussions of end-of-life decisions; and help to train the next generation of leaders in geriatric mental health education and research through a mentorship program.
Recent or Forthcoming Publications
Amato, P.R. 2007. Strengthening Marriage is an Appropriate Social Policy Goal. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 26:952-956, 961-963.
Amato, P.R. and R. Maynard. 2007. Decreasing Nonmarital Births and Strengthening Marriage to Reduce Poverty. Future of Children 17:117-142.
Amato, P.R., and B. Hohmann-Marriott. 2007. A Comparison of High and Low-Distress Marriages that End in Divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family 69:621-638.
Amato, P.R. 2007. Transformative Processes in Marriage: Some Thoughts from a Sociologist. Journal of Marriage and Family 69:305-309.
Sobolewski, J. and P.R. Amato. 2007. Parents' Discord and Divorce, Parent-Child Relationships, and Subjective Well-Being in Early Adulthood: Is Feeling Close to Two Parents Always Better than Feeling Close to One? Social Forces 85: 1105-1124.
Amato, P.R. 2007. Studying Marital Interaction and Commitment with Survey Data. Pp. 53-65 in Sandra Hofferth and Lynn Casper (Eds.), Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Amato, P.R., A. Booth, D.R. Johnson, and S.J. Rogers. 2007. Alone Together: How Marriage in America is Changing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schoen, R., N.S. Landale, and K. Daniels. 2007. Family Transitions in Young Adulthood. Demography (forthcoming).
Oropesa, R.S., N.S. Landale, and M. Greif. 2007. From Puerto Rican to Pan-Ethnic in New York City. Ethnic and Racial Studies (forthcoming).
Landale, N.S. and R.S. Oropesa. 2007. Hispanic Families: Stability and Change. Annual Review of Sociology 33: 381-405.
Landale, N.S., R.S. Oropesa, and C. Bradatan. 2006. Hispanic Families in the United States: Family Structure and Process in an Era of Family Change. Pp. 138-178 in M. Tienda (ed.) Hispanics and the Future of America. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Landale, N.S., B.K. Gorman, and R.S. Oropesa. 2006. Selective Migration and Infant Mortality among Puerto Ricans. Maternal and Child Health Journal 10: 351-360.
Massoglia, M.. Forthcoming 2008. "Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health." Law and Society Review.
Massoglia, M.. Forthcoming 2008. "Incarceration as Exposure: The Prison, Infectious Disease and Other Stress-Related Illnesses." The Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Kemper, P.K., F. Weaver, P.F. Short, and D. Shea. (2007). Meeting the Need for Personal Care Among the Elderly: Does Medicaid Home Care Spending Matter? Health Services Research.
Short, P.F., J. Vasey, and J. Moran. (2007). Long-Term Effects of Cancer Survivorship on the Employment of Older Workers. Health Services Research.
Short, P.F., J. Vasey, and R. BeLue. (2007). Work Disability Associated with Cancer Survivorship and Other Chronic Conditions. Psycho-Oncology.
Boron, J., Willis, S.L., and Schaie, K. W. (in press). Cognitive training gain as a predictor of mental status. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.
Boron, J., Turiano, N., Willis, S.L., and Schaie, K.W. (in press). Effects of cognitive training on accuracy and number of attempts in inductive reasoning ability. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Science.
Willis, S.L. (in press). Midlife Cognition: The association of personality with cognitionand risk of cognitive impairment. Chapter to appear in S. Hofer and D. Alwin (Eds). Handbook on Cognitive Aging: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Sage.
Beverly E.A., Wray, L.A., and Miller, C.K. (accepted for publication, 2007). Practice Implications of What Couples Tell us about Type 2 Diabetes Management. Diabetes Spectrum, forthcoming.
Beverly E.A., Penrod, J. and Wray, L.A. (2007). Living with Type 2 Diabetes: Marital Perspectives of Spousal Middle-Aged and Older Couples. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 45:24-32.
Beverly E.A., Wray, L.A., and Miller, C.K. (2007). Spousal Support and Food-Related Behavior Change in Middle-Aged and Older Adults Living with Type 2 Diabetes. Health Education & Behavior, forthcoming.
Alwin D.F., McCammon R.J., Wray L.A., and Rodgers W.L. (accepted for publication, 2007). Demographic Issues in the Future of Cognitive Aging Research. D.F. Alwin and S. M. Hofer (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Future of Cognitive Aging Research. Sage Publications, forthcoming.
Wray L.A. (2007). Smoking. Pp. 524-527 in K.S. Markides (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Health and Aging, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Wray L.A., Alwin D.F., McCammon, R.J., Manning, T., and Best L.E. (2006). Social Status, Risky Health Behaviors, and Diabetes in Middle-Aged and Older Adults. Journal of Gerontology: Social Science, 61B:S290-S298.
Pension Puzzles: Social Security and the Great Debate
A new book by Melissa Hardy, Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Sociology, and Lawrence Hazelrigg, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Florida State University, has been published by Russell Sage.
Hardy, M. and L. Hazelrigg (2007). Pension Puzzles: Social Security and the Great Debate. Russell Sage.
(From the publisher) - "The rancorous debate over the future of Social Security reached a fever pitch in 2005 when President Bush unsuccessfully proposed a plan for private retirement accounts. Although efforts to reform Social Security seem to have reached an impasse, the long-term problem-the projected Social Security deficit-remains. In Pension Puzzles, sociologists Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg explain for a general audience the fiscal challenges facing Social Security and explore the larger political context of the Social Security debate.
"Pension Puzzles cuts through the sloganeering of politicians in both parties, presenting Social Security's technical problems evenhandedly and showing how the Social Security debate is one piece of a larger political struggle. Hardy and Hazelrigg strip away the ideological baggage to explicate the basic terms and concepts needed to understand the predicament of Social Security. They compare the cases for privatizing Social Security and for preserving the program in its current form with adjustments to taxes and benefits, and they examine the different economic projections assumed by proponents of each approach. In pursuit of its privatization agenda, Hardy and Hazelrigg argue, the Bush administration has misled the public on an issue that was already widely misunderstood. The authors show how privatization proponents have relied on dubious assumptions about future rates of return to stock market investments and about the average citizen's ability to make informed investment decisions. In addition, the administration has painted the real but manageable shortfalls in Social Security revenue as a fiscal crisis. Projections of Social Security revenues and benefits by the Social Security Administration have treated revenues as fixed, when in fact they are determined by choices made by Congress. Ultimately, as Hardy and Hazelrigg point out, the clash over Social Security is about more than technical fiscal issues: it is part of the larger culture wars and the ideological struggle over what kind of social responsibilities and rights American citizens should have. This rancorous partisan wrangling, the alarmist talk about a "crisis" in Social Security, and the outright deception employed in this debate have all undermined the trust between citizens and government that is needed to restore the solvency of Social Security for future generations of retirees.
"Drawing together economic analyses, public opinion data, and historical narratives, Pension Puzzles is a lucid and engaging guide to the major proposals for Social Security reform. It is also an insightful exploration of what that debate reveals about American political culture in the twenty-first century."
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