2021

Deaths of despair by association? Social networks, experiences, and circumstances that lead to early death

While there is substantial suggestive evidence that youth criminal involvement and/or violent death correlates with poor outcomes for families, there is a significant gap in knowledge regarding its spillover effects over siblings and school peers, particularly in the context of North Carolina and Durham. A multi-pronged evaluation of the causes and consequences of these dimensions on dimensions associated with health, education and child development more generally is essential for informing public policy targeting disadvantaged populations within the state and local communities.

Adult age differences in learning and decision making related to differences in sensitivity to different types of reward

Neuroscientific research on decision making and aging has focused almost exclusively on monetary incentives. Despite evidence for intact processing of and motivation by monetary gains in old age, preserved function does not extend to learning-based decision making where these incentives must be applied. Here older adults learn more slowly from monetary gains and losses compared to younger adults.

Assessing New Data Source for Measuring Income Volatility to Study Its Relationship with Mortality in the U.S.

This pilot will assess the use of data from a commercial consumer database on all households in the U.S. to construct reliable measures of the volatility of household income. If successful, the resulting data will be used to assess the relationships between income volatility and mortality in the U.S. and how that relationship varies by race/ethnicity, age and gender of heads of households in the U.S. Study of the latter relationship has been hampered by the lack of availability of samples of households in the U.S.

Investigating child- and family-level effects of a postpartum home visiting intervention on the risk of child maltreatment

It is estimated that about 38% of children experience abuse and/or neglect, with the highest rates of maltreatment reported during early childhood. Experiences of child abuse and neglect are linked to poor developmental, behavioral, and health outcomes throughout the life course.