Events

Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture - Glen H. Elder, Jr.

Hard Times in Children's Lives: From Great Depression to Great Recession

For nearly five decades, Glen H. Elder, Jr. has studied individual lives and birth cohorts across the changing times of the past century, with emphasis on American men and women who were born in the 20s, grew up in Depression times, and experienced World War II. Out of this work has come a way of using archival data to think about changing times in a life course framework. The impact of such change generally varies according to when it occurs in a person’s life. Elder’s lecture pursues this theme by exploring hard times in lives among cohorts of young people who grew up during the Great Depression, and later on, among those who came of age during the great economic decline of the 1980s-90s in the rural Midwest. Scenarios from this work are relevant to the current economic crisis and its consequences for young and old.

Elder is presently a research professor at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill where he directs a training grant on aging and population and manages a research program on life course studies at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has also served on the faculties of the University of California - Berkeley and Cornell University, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

His books (authored, co-authored, and co-edited) include Children of the Great Depression (1974, 1999 expanded edition), Children in Time and Place (1993), Developmental Science (1996), Children of the Land (2000), and The Craft of Life Course Research (2009). In recognition of his work on the life course, Elder has received distinguished career awards from the Society for Research on Child Development and from sections of the American Sociological Association.