CPRC’s broad portfolio of research on children, youth, and families encompasses work on all phases of the life course, with overarching interests in family patterns/processes, inequalities and vulnerable groups, and the role of public policies. A particular strength of this group’s work is its developmental perspective, emphasizing how experiences at one phase of the life course set the stage for effects and transitions at subsequent stages and how outcomes of interest vary by developmental stage.
Leadership
Past Research: Professor Edlund’s research focuses on the economics of gender and family, interests that have also led her to evolutionary biology and life-history analysis. Edlund’s past research has analyzed the impact of marriage and partner market conditions on sex allocation, with a particular focus on the status of females. She has studied son preference and sex selective abortion, dowry determination, why cities in the industrialized world are more female, and sex allocation at the individual level. She has also been interested in the importance of female inheritance for the gender wealth distribution. Another strand of her research has explored the legal framework governing formal marriages across cultures, an interest that has led to studies of markets for sex and children, consent regimes (parental or individual consent), and the alignment of political preferences along gender lines in the wake of the sexual revolution ushered in by the Pill.
Present Research: Edlund’s current research focuses on maternal conditions and child outcomes. One paper looks at male vulnerability in early life. While it is well known that males suffer higher mortality than females at all ages, particularly up until age one, it is less well known that males suffer more from poor maternal conditions; Edlund and colleagues document this phenomenon, studying perinatal and infant mortality in the United States. A second paper examines maternal malnutrition and long-term (adult) outcomes of offspring using the Chinese Great Leap Forward famine as a natural experiment. Maternal malnutrition remains a problem in many developing countries where pregnant and lactating women are high-risk groups for nutritional inadequacy. A third paper looks at cognitive effects of fetal low-level ionizing irradiation. Sweden received substantial radioactive fallout following the Chernobyl nuclear accident that took place in Ukraine in 1986. We find that Swedish children in utero at the time performed worse in their final year of compulsory school (at age 16) than their peers who were not exposed, and the damage was more severe for children born in areas that received more fallout. Doses to the Swedish population were such that the results are relevant for policy formulation relating to, e.g., radon exposure, medical procedures, radiation workers, and recommendations in the case of a terrorist attack involving a so-called dirty bomb.
Future Research: Future work will investigate whether there were earlier health manifestations presaging the observed effects for Swedish children (perinatal outcomes, in-patient records), as well as track this cohort as it ages and as additional outcomes (fertility, mortality, labor market) become available. We will also explore the role of parental socioeconomic status in buffering the health and labor market impact of negative shocks to cognitive ability. Other work will investigate the effects of paternal absence on teenage girls, and the relationship between height and mortality.
Dr. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. She is also the co-director of the National Center for Children and Families. Dr. Brooks-Gunn is a developmental psychologist who studies children, youth, and families over time. She is interested in the family and neighborhood conditions that influence how children and youth thrive or do not and how conditions at different ages influence development. She also does policy work as well as designing and evaluating interventions for children and families (home visiting clinic based programs, early childhood education programs, and after school programs).
The goal of Dan Belsky's work is to reduce social inequalities in aging outcomes in the US and elsewhere. His research sits at the intersection of public health, population & behavioral science, and genomics. His studies seek to understand how genes and environments combine to shape health across the life course. Belsky's research uses tools from genome science and longitudinal data from population-based cohort studies. The aim is to identify targets for policy and clinical interventions to promote positive development from early life and extend healthspan. Belsky is a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Child Brain Development Network and from 2016-2018 was an Early Career Fellow of the Jacobs Foundation.