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Editor:
Tonya Allen
allen@pop.psu.edu
PRInformation Fall 1996 - Inaugural Issue
Contents
- Note from the Director
- Faculty Focus
- Staff News
- Student News
- Alumni News
- Articles of Interest
- New External Research Funding at PRI
- Selected Publications
This is the inaugural issue of PRInformation. As many of you already know, the PRI has been transformed over the past year -- a new director, many new faculty and staff, and several new research initiatives. PRInformation is a venue for bringing alumni, colleagues, and friends up to date about our activities. We plan to publish two issues (Fall and Spring) each year. News from alumni will be highlighted in each issue, so please send information about current activities to the editor.
Our successful P30 renewal application for NICHD core support for population research provided a wonderful opportunity to reexamine research priorities and to establish new relationships with many faculty in other departments and colleges in the University. For example, the PRI has initiated a new core in Geographic Information Analysis, which builds on current faculty strengths in Penn State's top-ranked geography program in spatial analysis, while at the same time allowing us to maintain a small lab and core staff in PRI. Brief descriptions of the new GIA Core and other initiatives in biodemography and statistical consulting appear later in this issue.
The level of funded research in the PRI is currently at an all-time high, with more than 30 projects receiving external funding from a variety of sponsors -- NICHD, NSF, NIA, Mellon and Spencer. Newly funded projects are highlighted in this issue. Our new WWW homepage provides more details.
Several new faculty members have joined the PRI this year. Martina Morris (sociology and statistics) joins us from Columbia University. She is a NIH FIRST award recipient and is currently conducting network analysis in Uganda and Thailand on AIDS transmission. Mark Handcock (Statistics) is an expert in spatial analysis, who will be extensively involved in our new core in GIA and in our reorganized statistics core. Rukamalie Jayakody is a new Ph.D. (Michigan) sociologist/demographer in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Her work focuses on intergenerational exchanges, remarriage processes, and poverty. Maria Krysan (sociology) also joins us from the University of Michigan. She is currently beginning a study, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, on racial segregation and racial attitudes in the United States. Valarie King has joined the PRI and sociology department after working with Glen Elder on the Iowa Farm study. Much of her recent research focuses on father-absence and socioemotional and cognitive outcomes among children. Finally, Jeff Manza is a new assistant professor in sociology who received his Ph.D. in 1995 from California-Berkeley. He is interested in welfare state policy, poverty, and inequality.
These are exciting times in PRI -- another stage in our maturation as a truly interdisciplinary center for innovative population research. This issue of PRInformation highlights a few of these recent changes and describes some of our new initiatives.
Daniel T. Lichter
Director
Martina Morris Joins PRI
Dr. Martina Morris holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Sociology and Statistics at Penn State. Her current research has two largely separate programs of study, one on the role of networks in infectious disease transmission and the other on the recent rise in US economic inequality. The first main substantive area of research is in the population dynamics of AIDS transmission. She has developed extensions to generalized linear models that enable one to link empirical network biases (such as assortative mixing by age or race) to dynamic simulation models for the spread of infection in a population. These methods were designed to use simple local (or ego-net) network data, and this has made it possible to conduct appropriate surveys in several countries to date, including the United States, Thailand, and Uganda. Dr. Morris currently holds an NIH FIRST award to support the comparative analysis of these data sets. Her papers in this area have appeared in a wide range of journals, including Nature, the American Journal of Epidemiology, Social Networks, and Mathematical Biosciences. Dr. Morris also has an active research agenda in the area of earnings inequality. With colleagues A.D. Bernhardt and M.S. Handcock she has developed new methods for visualizing and analyzing changes in the U.S. earnings distribution in response to two decades of economic restructuring. The methods retain full distributional information, and are thus more sensitive to the theoretical debates in the current literature. Papers on this topic have been published in the American Sociological Review, and the American Journal of Sociology. This work is being funded by a grant from the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations. Morris and Handcock are also working on a monograph for the new Springer Verlag series on Statistics in the Social Sciences that will cover the theory and application of relative distributions.
Firebaugh Named Editor
PRI associate Glenn Firebaugh has been named to a three-year term as editor of the AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association. The ASA Council selected Glenn to be editor for the 1997, 1998, and 1999 volumes of this prestigious journal. The editorial transition from the University of Arizona to Penn State began July, 1996, when new submissions first came to Penn State. As of January 1, Glenn will assume full responsibility for all manuscripts, including all invited resubmissions.
Dr. Firebaugh is assisted by five deputy editors, a 45-member editorial board, and a managing editor who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. The ASR at Penn State is housed in newly-renovated offices in Oswald Tower.
Landale NAS Committee Member
Nancy Landale, PRI associate and associate professor of sociology, is currently serving on the Committee on the Health and Adjustment of Immigrant Children and Families of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine Board on Children, Youth, and Families. The committee will synthesize the relevant research literature, present results from secondary analysis, clarify what is known about the risk and predictive factors associated with differential health and well being of immigrant groups, and about the delivery of health and social services to these groups. They will also assess the adequacy of existing data and make recommendations for new data collection and research needed to inform and improve public policy and programs.
McLaughlin Appointed Deputy Director
Diane K. McLaughlin was appointed PRI's deputy director in June, 1995. Dr. McLaughlin has been a research associate in PRI since 1991 and an assistant professor of rural sociology since 1992. Her research interests include issues related to family, stratification, labor force, and mortality, with special emphasis on the influence of local conditions (e.g., labor markets and industrial restructuring) for understanding spatial differences and changes over time. Her research has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. McLaughlin served as deputy director and then associate director for the Center on Aging and Health in Rural America at Penn State. Dr. McLaughlin brings a unique combination of administrative experience and research credentials to her role as PRI's deputy director.
A paper by Ramona King, "Steps Toward Professionalization", was presented by John McKee, Penn State College of Engineering, at the Society of Research Administrators annual meeting, October 5-9, 1996, in Toronto. The paper will be published in the proceedings of the conference. Ramona is grants and contracts assistant at PRI.
Jeanne Spicer, computer programmer/analyst at PRI, was invited to present her paper, "Quick and Easy AF Applications Using SAS/Assist Software, SAS Data Views, Block Menus, and HTML" at the 9th Annual NorthEast SAS User's Group Conference in Boston, October 6-8. She presented the paper earlier this year at the SAS User's Group International Conference in Chicago.
Sherry Yocum, assistant to the director at PRI, was a panelist for the session, "Electronic Issues for the Departmental Administrator" at the National Conference on Electronic Research Administration sponsored by the National Council of University Research Administrators in Atlanta, August 9-11, 1996.
Joe Broniszewski, formerly the system administrator in the Department of Statistics, is now computer system administrator in PRI. Joe brings considerable technical skill and computing experience to the position, especially in terms of integrating PC and workstation-based environments.
On January 1, 1996, Maryjayne Watson retired from her position as secretary in the Population Research Institute. She had been with us from the first day of the center in October, 1972. During those 23+ years she was the constant in the context of changing cohorts of students and faculty associated with first the Population Issues Research Office (PIRO), then the Population Issues Research Center (PIRC), and recently the Population Research Institute (PRI). She knew all of us and fed most of us with her "goodies." We remember her fondly and wish her well in her retirement.
Mike Zimmerman will be in Bangkok, Thailand from November 12-23 as technical consultant for the POPIN Internet Workshop, sponsored by the United Nations Population Information Network.
Melonie Heron and Quynh-Giang Tran, graduate students in the dual-title program in sociology and demography, have received 1996-97 Minority Summer Dissertation Workshop Awards from the International Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council. Ms. Heron's research is on "Changing Caribbean Immigration Patterns and Immigrant Adaptation: A Migration Systems Approach." Ms. Tran's proposal deals with the "Impact of Vietnamese Community on Immigrant Occupational Status: Relating Social Capital and Human Capital."
Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue and C. Shannon Stokes were awarded a Blue Ribbon Poster Award for their 1996 Population Association of America poster titled "On the Production of Child Quality." Mr. Eloundou-Enyegue is a Ph.D. student in demography and rural sociology. Dr. Stokes is professor of rural sociology and a PRI associate.
Donna Morrison is assistant professor of Public Policy and Demography, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Prosper Poukouta is a research fellow with the Population Council's Regional Office in Nairobi, Kenya.
Recent Dissertations
Janet Wilmoth: "Living Arrangement Transitions among Older Adults" Fall 1995. Janet is now assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University.
Anna Madamba: "Underemployment among Asians in the United States" Fall 1994. Anna currently is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina.
Robert Anderson: "Marriage Markets and the Process of Remarriage" Fall 1996. Bob has accepted a position as a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics in Washington, D.C.
Carol Conroy: "Developmental Precursors to Labor Mobility among Rural Pennsylvania Youth: Implications for Career Development Education and Programming" Summer 1996. Carol started work as assistant professor of agriculture and life sciences at Cornell University in July.
Ekuwa Gyan: "Household Characteristics and School Participation: Implications for Children's Schooling in Ghana" Summer 1996.
Kristine Witkowski: "Structural, Problem-Solving, and Life-Cycle Issues in the Organizational Institutionalization of Work-Family Programs" Fall 1996. Kris is now employed at the U.S. Bureau of the Census as a research associate.
Anne Calves: "Youth and Fertility in Cameroon: Changing Patterns of Family Formation" Summer 1996. Anne is currently a Mellon post-doctoral fellow at the University of Montreal.
PRI Adds Geographic Analysis Capabilities
The Geographic Information Analysis (GIA) Core is a new research initiative at PRI based on collaborative arrangements between PRI and the departments of Geography and Statistics. The GIA Core provides both an institutional mechanism and experienced researchers/staff to support innovative research on such topics as geographic differentiation, contextual effects on fertility, or developmental and health outcomes, and population change and environmental degradation.
One of the strengths of the GIA core will be the close intellectual collaboration with faculty in the Statistics Core (directed by Mark Hayward), the Department of Statistics (Mark Handcock, Susan Murphy, and Joseph Schafer) and the Department of Geography (Donna Peuquet, Cindy Brewer, David DiBiase, and Doug Miller). Alan MacEachren (geography) and Stephen Matthews (director, PRI Computer Core) are co-directors of the GIA Core. The GIA Core provides technical support in the collection, integration and analysis of spatial and demographic data; utilizes visualization techniques and spatial modeling tools; and supports GIA fieldwork activities. In addition, the GIA core helps determine whether applications of GIA techniques are appropriate and provides user-training.
The success of the GIA Core will be measured by how the provision of GIA services translates into innovative demographic research and improves the ability of PRI researchers to address questions related to spatial variation in individual behavior and demographic processes. Early indications are that GIA will thrive at PRI. Not only are PRI faculty currently using GIA methods, but new proposals are being developed that will rely on and use the core services for questions relating to the changing ethnic structure in US cities, spatio-temporal investigations of disease and mortality, studies of rural poverty, and community risk factors for urban violence.
PRI Revises Statistical Consulting Services
The Statistics Core has expanded the services it offers to PRI researchers with the addition of two statistics core consultants, Annie Qu (Chu) and Yong Lin. Annie and Yong are Ph.D. graduate students in Penn State's Department of Statistics. They offer regular statistical consulting hours at PRI. Mark Handcock and Martina Morris joined the group of faculty affiliated with the Statistics Core at the beginning of the fall semester. Mark is an associate professor of statistics. His primary statistical interests are spatial-temporal stochastic modeling and missing data. Mark will be working with the core to provide advanced statistical consulting to PRI faculty. Martina Morris is an associate professor of sociology and statistics. Her statistical interests are interdistributional comparisons and quantitative network analysis. Their statistical expertise offers some exciting new avenues for collaborative work with other PRI faculty.
PRI Expands Biodemography Initiatives
The PRI proposal for supplemental NIA funding to support several new initiatives in biodemography and aging has been approved for 1996-97. These monies will support conference planning activities for a symposium on biodemography (to be held in Winter 1998 and spearheaded by Jim Wood, PRI associate and professor of anthropology and Kathleen O'Connor, NIA postdoctoral fellow at PRI), faculty development through new collaborative relationships in biodemography, and a visiting speaker series on the topic of biodemography and aging. The overarching goal is to establish additional faculty strengths and new collaborative research in biodemography.
PRI Awarded Hewlett Grant
The Hewlett Foundation recently awarded the Population Research Institute and graduate program in demography a three-year grant for training and research in international demography. The $330,000 grant is co-directed by Gordon F. De Jong, distinguished professor of sociology and director, graduate program in demography; Gretchen Cornwell, assistant professor of rural sociology; and Daniel T. Lichter, professor of sociology and director, PRI. The award provides stipend and tuition grants for pre-doctoral third-world students in the graduate program in demography. It also supports collaborative international demographic research projects of Population Research Institute faculty. The demography program is a dual-title intercollege graduate degree program with six participating departments: sociology, anthropology, economics, agricultural economics, rural sociology, and human development and family studies. This is the fifth award from the Hewlett Foundation which has continuously supported the Population Research Institute and graduate program in demography since 1982. Over these 14 years, Hewlett funds have provided tuition and stipends, dissertation research grants, and graduate program development funds for 56 international students.
PRI on the WWW
The Population Research Institute has had a presence on the World-Wide Web (WWW) since December of 1993. That may not seem like long, but PRI was one of the first population centers to set up a WWW server. During that time, the PRI Web site has grown from a simple electronic version of the printed brochure to become an important resource to population researchers both within PRI and elsewhere. National publications such as the Population Association of America's "PAA Affairs" and the Association of Population/ Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers (APLIC) "Union List of Serials" are made available internationally in electronic format through the PRI WWW server, along with local publications such as "PopNotes," "Computer Core Comments," and the two PRI working papers series. In addition to providing information about the Population Research Institute itself, the WWW site acts as an unofficial directory to other population centers in the Association of Population Centers (APC) and a clearinghouse for links to a wide range of information sources on subjects related to demography and population research. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the PRI WWW site is: http://www.pop.psu.edu
CONFERENCES
Penn State Hosts National Symposium On Men in Families
A national symposium designed to examine men's family roles and relationships, sponsored in part by PRI, was held October 31-November 1 on the Penn State campus. Organizers of the symposium were Alan Booth, professor of sociology and PRI associate, and Ann Crouter, professor of human development. The sessions addressed four major issues: (1) a historical and prospective look at men in families; (2) the conditions under which men form families and invest in parenthood; (3) men's contributions to marital relationships; and (4) men as fathers.
Lead speakers included Steven Mintz, University of Houston; Jane Lancaster and Hillard Kaplan, University of New Mexico; John Gottman, University of Washington; and Paul Amato, University of Nebraska. Linda Burton, PRI associate and professor of human development and family studies and professor of sociology; Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University; Michael Lamb, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Patricia Draper, PRI associate and professor of anthropology; William Marsiglio, University of Florida; Catherine Surra, University of Texas; Scott Coltrane, University of California-Riverside; Myra Marx Ferree, University of Connecticut; Steven Nock, University of Virginia; Jay Belsky, Penn State; Frank Furstenberg, University of Pennsylvania; and Judith Seltzer, University of Wisconsin were discussants.
Conference Honoring Clifford C. Clogg Held at Penn State
An interdisciplinary conference on social science and statistics was held September 26-28, 1996 at The Pennsylvania State University to honor the late Clifford Clogg, distinguished professor of sociology and professor of statistics, The Pennsylvania State University. Professor Clogg's long time mentor, colleague, and friend, Leo A. Goodman, the class of 1938 professor of statistics and sociology, University of California-Berkeley, delivered the keynote address. A series of invited papers sessions organized around themes symbolizing the distinguished career of the late Professor Clogg were presented. Penn State and the National Science Foundation provided financial support for the conference. The Government Statistics and Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association, and the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association co-sponsored the conference.
NEW EXTERNAL RESEARCH FUNDING AT PRI
NICHD Population Center Core Grant
Daniel T. Lichter, professor of sociology and PRI Director, is principle investigator on PRI's center grant. Center grant funding for PRI was renewed for five years beginning in July, 1996. Funding is provided for PRI's existing cores: Administrative, Computer, Information, and Statistics, and for two new initiatives - the GIA Core and the Biodemography Program.
Sexual Networks and HIV: Models and Intervention
Martina Morris, associate professor of sociology and statistics and PRI associate, has been granted a five-year FIRST award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This project will involve detailed comparative analysis of two recent sexual network studies (from Thailand and Uganda) representing different phases of the epidemic. Network analysis will be refined for epidemiologic modeling, which will be used to identify the key components of network structure for predicting HIV transmission dynamics and to identify strategic points of intervention.
Active Life Expectancy in the Older Population
Mark D. Hayward, professor of sociology and PRI associate, has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Institute on Aging to assess the relationship between socioeconomic status of older individuals and whether they experience "longer life with better health." With Eileen Crimmins, University of Southern California, Hayward will be examining the SES gradient across types of health problems defining the course of the disablement process, and investigating how SES differences in health changes are related to differential exposure to unhealthy work environments, risky health behaviors, and access to and use of medical care. Susan Murphy, associate professor of statistics, also is involved in this project.
Marital Instability Over the Life Course
Alan Booth, professor of sociology and PRI associate, will continue his data collection and research examining marriage over the life course. This funding from the National Institute on Aging provides for conducting a fifth interview with the original sample, a second interview with offspring, and first interviews with offspring reaching maturity since 1992. Two substantive issues are the focus. First, to determine if there is an upturn in marital relations in the later stages of the life course, and second, to build on earlier work tracking the way in which parental marital quality and divorce are related to offspring well-being. Other investigators on this project are Paul R. Amato and David R. Johnson, University of Nebraska; and John N. Edwards, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.
Trends in Intercountry Income Inequality
Glenn Firebaugh, professor of sociology and PRI associate, has received funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate trends in intercountry income inequality--the major component of world income inequality. Firebaugh proposes to decompose trends in intercountry income inequality into components due to changing income ratios and to each nation's share of the world population, and to assess each nation's contribution to total intercountry inequality over the period studied.
Pregnancy-Related Sickness in Rural Bangladesh
James W. Wood, professor of anthropology; Kathleen O'Connor, NIA postdoctoral fellow at PRI; Darryl J. Holman, PRI associate, received a one-year grant from National Science Foundation to study pregnancy related nausea and vomiting (PRS) in a non-Western population. PRS is currently hypothesized to be a protective mechanism and is related to decreased risk of fetal loss. Thus it is considered a positive rather than negative aspect of pregnancy. This research tests this hypothesis in a non-Western population by combining biological and interview data spanning long gestational periods of a large, non-clinical random sample of women.
Work and Opportunity in the Post-Industrial Labor Market
Martina Morris will be examining the extent to which current restructuring within firms in the United States results in increasing segmentation of workers, with an increasing polarity between workers in stable well-paid jobs and those in contingent dead-end jobs. Specifically, the research will test whether an increased lack of mobility of workers between core and peripheral jobs is the mechanism by which segmentation occurs. Funding for this research comes from Teacher's College/Russell Sage Foundation.
Racial Residential Preferences: The Meaning Behind the Cards
Maria Krysan, assistant professor of sociology and PRI affiliate, received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation to examine attitudes towards racial residential preferences. In particular, this study will focus on the meaning or explanations that individuals give for their preferences regarding racial residential segregation.
Marriage, Fertility, and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
Amy Stambach, postdoctoral fellow at PRI, has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support her research investigating the directionality of the relationship between schooling and fertility, and whether increased levels of schooling lead to reduced fertility, fewer mates, and the tendency to form stable unions. These patterns have not been found in some Sub-Saharan Africa countries and this study will use ethnographic methods and survey techniques to examine these unexpected relationships between schooling and fertility and family formation behavior.
Axinn, W.G. and A. Thornton (1996). "The Influence of Parents' Marital
Dissolutions on Children's Attitudes toward Family Formation." Demography 33(1):66-81.
Burton, L.M., D. Obeidallah, and K. Allison (1996). "Ethnographic
Perspectives on Social Context and Adolescent Development among Inner-City African-
American teens." In R. Jessor, A. Colby, and R. Shwoder (eds.),
Essays on Ethnography and Human Development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Eggebeen, D.J., A.D. Snyder, and W.D. Manning (1996). "Children in Single Father Families in Demographic Perspective." Journal of Family Issues 17:441-465.
Gage, A., A.E. Sommerfelt, and A.L. Piani (1996). Household Structure,
Socioeconomic Level and Child Health in Sub-Saharan Africa. DHS Analytical Reports, No. 1. Calverton, MD: Macro International Inc.
McLeod, J.D. and M.J. Shanahan (1996). "Trajectories of Poverty and
Children's Mental Health." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 37:207-228.
Oropesa, R.S. (1996). "Normative Beliefs about Marriage and Cohabitation: A
Comparison of Non-Latino Whites, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans."
Journal of Marriage and the Family 58:49-62.
Post, D. (1996). "The Massification of Education in Hong Kong: Effects on
the Equality of Opportunity 1981-1991." Sociological Perspectives 39:155-174.
Weiss, K.M. (1996). "Is There a 'Paradigm' Shift in Genetics? Lessons from
the Study of Human Diseases." Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 5:259-265.
PRInformation is published twice yearly by the Population Research Institute, Penn State. Please address correspondence to the editor, Tonya Allen, 601 Oswald Tower, Penn State, University Park, PA 16802-4900.
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