Liying Luo, Ph.D.

Dr. Luo’s research focuses 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.  She has 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.  She also studies quantitative methods for describing and explaining temporal trends in health behaviors and vital rates.  She recently expands her research areas to investigating the heterogeneous effects of biosocial factors among sociodemographic groups on their health and social well-being.  Her work has appeared in top journals including American Journal of Sociology, Demography (lead article with four commentaries and a reply), and Sociological Methods & Research.  She serves on the editorial board of Sociological Methods & Research and Sociological Methodology.