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Editor:
Tonya Allen
allen@pop.psu.edu
PRInformation
Fall 2005
Note from the Director
Any population center draws vitality from new faculty who bring fresh interests, ideas, perspectives and excitement. This fall, PRI welcomes a number of new faculty associates and affiliates. We highlight these new researchers here, and in the Faculty Focus section of this newsletter.
Dr. Michelle Frisco (Sociology and Demography) studies the intersection of family life, education and health during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. Her work on families and schools shows how parenting during adolescence influences contraceptive use after young women leave home and enter young adulthood, and is one of only a handful of studies that shows how parental involvement impacts young women's lives outside of school. Frisco also researches how family structure influences academic achievement. Frisco's newest research, which is being conducted with colleagues Dr. Molly Martin and Dr. Gary Sandefur, focuses on the sociological and demographic causes and consequences of adolescent overweight. This project is detailed in the New External Research Funding section of this newsletter.
Dr. Molly A. Martin (Sociology and Demography) investigates the reproduction of inequality across generations by examining how the family influences children's development across different outcomes in concert with different social structures. Martin has examined the family in interaction with social welfare policy, being among the first to reveal that limited economic mobility accounts for a significant portion of the observed intergenerational correlation in welfare participation. Martin's research continues to examine intergenerational patterns, particularly in the realm of educational attainment to investigate whether demographic changes in family formation have altered intergenerational stratification processes.
Dr. Kathryn Hynes (Human Development and Family Studies) focuses on the role of work-place policies, welfare reform, and couple-level behavior in the work-family decisions of families with children. Hynes, with colleague Dr. Marin Clarkberg, used the novel group-based trajectory method to examine the relationship between women's fertility and their employment behavior, documenting the diversity of employment trajectories women follow across early parenthood. With Dr. Susan Singley, Hynes documented the interaction of workplace policies and parents' ideology on couples' decisions about how to structure their work and family roles during early parenthood. Hynes has embarked on a new project utilizing SIPP data to examine the stability of living arrangements for children residing in households without either of their parents.
Dr. Kai Schafft (Education Policy Studies) is director of the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Penn State. One of Schafft's primary research interests is the relationship between residential mobility and rural development and/or underdevelopment within both international and domestic contexts. His earlier work examined patterns of rural-urban population redistribution associated with the Hungarian post-socialist transformation. Schafft's more recent work examines high frequency, short distance residential mobility as a cause and consequence of rural poverty within the U.S. context. This work in particular focuses on residential mobility of low-income families and the effects of that mobility on schools and communities.
Other faculty who have recently joined PRI -- Dr. Carol Weisman (Health Evaluation Sciences), Dr. Chalandra Bryant (Human Development and Family Studies), Dr. Elias Mpofu (Education), Dr. Gustavo Ventura (Economics), and Dr. Robin Taylor Wilson (Health Evaluation Sciences) -- are profiled below, and on PRI's web site. Representing the Colleges of the Liberal Arts, Education, Health and Human Development, and Medicine, together these new faculty contribute greatly to PRI's multidisciplinary character.
Leif I. Jensen
Director
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