Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State, Demographer and Methodologist
contact me by email: liyingluo@psu.edu
In my research, I focus on (1) how aging, social change, and population processes interact with social institutions such as schools and family to produce inequality and disparities and (b) identifying trajectories and explaining trends in health, cognitive, and mortality outcomes. I have developed a novel model for determining age, time periods, and cohort patterns in various outcomes such as cognitive development, health status and behaviors, mortality, and substance use. I also study quantitative methods for describing and explaining temporal trends in health behaviors and vital rates. I recently expand my research areas to investigating the heterogeneous effects of education between sociodemographic groups on their health, cognition, and dementia. My work has appeared in journals including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Demography (lead article with four commentaries and a reply), Sociological Methods & Research and Sociological Methodology. I serve on the editorial board of Sociological Methods & Research and Sociological Methodology.
Current research support:
National Institutes of Health. “Heterogeneous Effects of Education on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias among Demographic Groups: A Multigenerational and Multilevel Study.” Total cost: $1,779,640. Role: PI
National Institutes of Health, “Cohort Differences in Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer Disease and Related Dementias: Education Effects and Sex Differences.” Total costs: $321,000.00. Role: PI
Example publications:
Luo, Liying. 2022. “Heterogeneous Effects of Intergenerational Social Mobility: An Improved Method and New Evidence.” American Sociological Review 87(1): 143-173 [the R package MCM and Stata command MCM_STATA for implementing the mobility contrast model]
Luo, Liying and James Hodges. 2022. “The Age-Period-Cohort-Interaction Model for Describing and Investigating Inter-Cohort Deviations and Intra-Cohort Life-Course Dynamics.” Sociological Methods & Research 51(3): 1164-1210 [the R package APCI for implementing the APC-I model] FAQ for the age-period-cohort-interaction (APC-I) model
Luo, Liying, Orfeu M. Buxton, David M. Almeida, Alyssa A. Gamaldo, and Qian Xiao. 2021. “Opposite Educational Gradients in Sleep Duration between Black and White Adults, 2004-2018” Sleep Health 7 (1):3-9
Wen Fan and Liying Luo. 2020. “A Decomposition of Trends in the Infant Mortality Disadvantage Index in the United States: 1983-2010.” Demography 57(3): 979-1005
Warren, John Robert, Liying Luo, Andrew Halpern-Manners, James Raymo, and Alberto Palloni. 2015. “Do Different Methods for Modeling Age-Graded Trajectories Yield Consistent and Valid Results?” American Journal of Sociology 120 (6): 1809-1856.
Liying Luo. 2013. “Assessing Validity and Application of the Intrinsic Estimator Approach to the Age-Period-Cohort Problem.” Demography 50 (6): 1945-1967 (Lead article with four commentaries and a reply)