Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities
The Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities (CoPAD) is an SSRI-funded working group that focuses on new and growing sources of inequality among aging adults, with attention to the ways that population dynamics and life course processes interact to alter the composition of the older adult population and the landscape of population health. Population aging is increasingly diverse, and new cohorts of middle-aged adults are entering their older years with different life course exposures to social stressors and policy environments with strong implications for later life health. For instance, current cohorts of aging adults in the United States contain a rapidly increasing share of immigrants, people with a history of criminal justice system contact, and those who experienced a lifetime of precarious work conditions, among other changes, all of which position them to enter their later years with lower levels of access to private and public services like retirement income and health insurance that are key social determinants of health. Globally, ever larger cohorts exposed during their lives to increased climate pressures, wars, and natural disasters are entering older adulthood, often without the family safety nets that prior generations relied on for companionship, caregiving, and social support. CoPAD brings together researchers working on these topics in several population-based, social science fields, surfaces new methodologies and data sources of interest to scholars of aging and the lifecourse, and provides a structure that helps foster new research ideas and project directions related to population aging and disparities.
If you are interested in being added to the CoPAD listserv about upcoming opportunities, please email Ashton Verdery at amv5430@psu.edu
Working Group Members (*founding members)
Ashton Verdery* (Sociology)
Cleothia Frazier* (Sociology)
Leif Jensen (Rural Sociology)
Alexis Santos-Lozada (Human Development and Family Studies)
Liying Luo (Sociology)
Jessica Ho (Sociology)
Steven Haas (Sociology)