The impact of social, environmental and contextual factors on mental and physical health outcomes is a primary focus of DPRC Scholars. It requires an examination of interactions among biological, environmental, and behavioral factors across different populations and species over time. These interactions can be observed by linking innovative life-course analytic and bio-demographic approaches—including human and non-human primate materials—in data collection and analysis.
DPRC researchers are extensively involved in longitudinal studies that follow cohorts from childhood through the life course and analyses that advance this area of population research.
Illustrative Activities:
- The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, led by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, combines genetic and other biomarkers with traditional survey data to identify the genetic and childhood precursors of adult patterns of self-control, mental illness, inflammation, and several other conditions.
- Kenneth Dodge links the Great Smoky Mountain Survey with Fast Track (FT), to test how successful childhood human capital interventions influence future parenting and whether benefits persist, as measured by birth, educational and mental health outcomes of the next generation.
- The Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, led by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, provides access to individual-level data on more than 1000 UK twin pairs at ages 5 (in 2000), 7 (in 2002) and 12 (in 2007) to investigate how genetic and environmental factors shape children's disruptive behavior. Using these data, they published the first prospective analysis of maltreatment and telomere erosion.
- Susan Alberts and Jenny Tung rely on data collected from a wild non-human primate population through the Amboseli Baboon Research Project over the past 50 years, and captive primates at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, to understand how social status and social affiliation affect gene regulations and health outcomes.
- Anna Gassman-Pines and Christina Gibson-Davis use exogenous variation in the timing of job loss in NC to understand how economic downturns affect fertility, marriage rates and child educational outcomes.
- Christina Gibson-Davis merges North Carolina vital statistics data on births and marriages to investigate how job loss impacts the health and well-being of low-income families
- Marcos Rangel examines the impact of in utero exposure to pollution on subsequent health and human capital outcomes and as well as fertility responses to the Zika epidemic.
- Jennifer Lansford’s Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) Study follows a culturally diverse cohorts of boys and girls and their parents across nine countries for the last ten years to examine the trajectory of health compromising and illegal risk-taking behaviors from childhood to early adulthood as a function of biological maturation and socialization.