Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center

BLCC Faculty Affiliates from a number of disciplines conduct life-course oriented research. The following are selected research accomplishments from the academic year 2004-2005.

Carol Bisogni (DNS) published an article that was based on research funded by the BLCC IRP program.

Bisogni, CA, M Jastran, L Shen and CM Devine. A biographical study of food choice capacity: standards, circumstances, and food management skills. J Nutrition Education and Behavior, In press.

David Brown (Development Sociology) published Challenges for Rural America in the 21st Century, (Penn State University Press), which won the Choice outstanding academic book award.

Richard Burkhauser and John Cawley (PAM) received BLCC IRP funding to look at the consequences of obesity on employment disability and movement onto the Social Security Disability Insurance rolls. This grant allowed them to submit a proposal for funding as part of the University of Michigan Retirement Research Consortium that is funded by the Social Security Administration. They were awarded a one year grant titled "Employment Disability, Obesity, and the Movement onto the DI and SSI rolls. ($75,000) 10P9832501. They completed the grant in 2004 and gave a paper based on that project at a Social Security Administration-sponsored Conference in Washington in 2004. Based on that work John Cawley, Dean Lillard and Richard Burkhauser are now working on a proposal that they intend to submit to the National Institute on Aging in 2005.

Carol Devine (DNS) published the following article related to her BLCC interests:

DevineC. The life course perspective: Understanding food choices in time, social location, and history. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2005;37(3):121-128.

John Eckenrode (HD, FLDC) completed a paper (graduate student Mary Campa as first author) that was submitted to Journal of Marriage and the Family on "Pathways to Intergenerational Adolescent Childbearing."

Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue  (Development Sociology) published a paper in Demography, following presentation of the initial draft and feedback from the BLCC.

Eloundou-Enyegue, P.M. 2004. Pregnancy-Related Dropouts and Gender Inequality in Education: A Life Table Approach and Application to Cameroon. Demography 41(3):509-528.

In addition, he is in the early stages of planning a panel study where he will follow up 3,300 Cameroonian families that he initially interviewed in 1999. This panel study would provide a unique opportunity to monitor a variety of life course transitions and demographic outcomes, without relying on retrospective designs.

Edward Frongillo (DNS) submitted in January 2005 a research grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health entitled "Causes of Undernutrition and Its Consequence for Physical Function in the Elderly". The purpose of the proposed research is to understand the determinants of undernutrition among elders living at home and the consequences of undernutrition for the development of frailty and declining physical function in elders.

Bruce Halpern (Psychology) initiated a course related to later life, on the molecularbiology of aging (The Quest for Agelessness - Psych 527, BioNB 420-02and 720-05) in Spring 2005.

Stephen and Mary Agnes Hamilton (HD, FLDC) published the following life-course oriented article:

Hamilton, S.F., & Hamilton, M.A. (in press). School, work, and emerging adulthood. In J.J. Arnett & J.L. Tanner (Eds.), Emerging adults in America: Coming of age in the 21st century. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Thomas Hirschl (Development Sociology) published:

Rank, Mark R. and Thomas A. Hirschl 2005 The Likelihood of Using Food Stamps During the Adulthood Years. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 37:137-146.

Dean Lillard (PAM) published several papers on life-course themes, including the following article that examines how self-reported health at age 50, 60,and 70 varies with income inequality using data from three countries. They found that although own income is strongly correlated with self-reported health at each age in each country, self-reported health is not correlated with societal income inequality.

Lillard, Dean, and Burkhauser, Richard V. 2005. Income Inequality and Health: A Cross-Country Analysis. Schmollers Jahrbuch (Journal of Applied Social Science Studies).

He also was involved in five NIH grant proposals having to do with life-course related topics.

Lorraine Maxwell (DEA) has designed a new course on facilities and diversity. The course will look at how facilities respond to issues of culture, differences in physical abilities, gender, persons across the life span. It will either be a graduate course or an upper level undergraduate course.

Stephen Morgan (Sociology) published a life course-related book: On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Attainment and Race in the United States (Stanford University Press).

Jennifer Tiffany (FLDC) continued work on HIV education and outreach. Her state-funded Parent HIV Education Project provided workshops, intensive trainings, and one-to-one education to over 10,600 New York State residents during 2003-2004

Pamela Tolbert (ILR) wrote a book chapter related to life-course studies.

Tolbert, P. (In press). "Structure, norms and outcomes: Organizational demography and individual careers." In H. Gunz and M. Peiperl (eds.), Handbook of Career Studies. New York: Sage Publications. (with Barbara Lawrence).

She is also involved in a research project (with Ronit Waismel-Manor) that is focused on the impact of couple earning patterns (wife main earner, husband main earner, equivalent earners) on individuals' career and family satisfaction.

Qi Wang (HD) published several articles relevant to the BLCC’s life-course focus, including:

Wang, Q. & Conway, M. A. (2004). The stories we keep: Autobiographical memory in American and Chinese middle-aged adults. Journal of Personality, 72, 5, 911-938.

Wang, Q. & Fivush, R. (2005). Mother-child conversations of emotionally salient events: Exploring the functions of emotional reminiscing in European American and Chinese Families. Social Development, 14, 3, 473-495.

Elaine Wethington (HD) published one article utilizing the life course perspective:

Wethington, Elaine. (2005). The life course perspective on health: Implications for health and nutrition. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 37, 115-120.