# LIFE-COURSE TRANSITIONS, GEOGRAPHY, & ELDERLY POVERTY

> **NIH NIH R01** · PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE · 1993 · $91,843

## Abstract

This research will develop behavioral and dynamic models of economic
well-being among older Americans that, for the first time, incorporate
labor force participation, employment status over the life course,
marital status changes, socioeconomic background characteristics, and
geographic context.

The 1990 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) (both the
response and nonresponse files) will be analyzed.  The PSID contains
longitudinal data on a wide variety of social, demographic, and economic
variables, and will be used to track older individuals as they age.  The
first objective is to document the differences in income sources and
poverty experiences of men and women in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan
areas.  Kaplan-Meier survivor functions for poverty transitions will be
estimated and utilized to generate distributions of poverty spells by
gender and residence.  The second objective is to use pooled person-year
records to estimate logistic regression models predicting the likelihood
of being poor, paying special attention to the impact of work history,
marital status and metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan residence.  The
third objective is to identify aspects of work history, life course
transitions, individual characteristics, and geographic context that
influence the rates at which men and women enter and exit poverty.
Discrete-time methods will be employed to estimate competing risks event
history models with fixed and time-varying covariates.

It is hypothesized that metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas have
different opportunity structures and employment conditions that, when
accumulated over the life course, culminate in nonmetropolitan elderly
persons having (1) more and longer spells of poverty; (2) a higher
likelihood of being poor at some time during old age; and (3) higher
rates of transition into poverty and lower rates of transition out of
poverty, when compared with metropolitan elderly men and women.
Ultimately, this research will assess the usefulness of a life course
perspective that focuses on work history and marital status for
understanding the economic well-being of elderly men and women, and will
remedy an absence of concern in the literature for the effects of
geographic context in shaping economic prospects in old age.  It provides
an opportunity to determine whether life course experiences alone are
enough to explain differences in well-being, or whether life experiences
must be placed within a geographic context to full understand to
processes and conditions that place elderly men and women at risk of
being poor.
GRANT-R01AI34154
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## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3123214
- **Project number:** 1R01AG011240-01
- **Recipient organization:** PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE
- **SAM.gov UEI:** NPM2J7MSCF61
- **Principal Investigator:** DIANE K MCLAUGHLIN
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1993
- **Award amount:** $91,843
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 1993-03-01 → 1996-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3123214

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3123214, LIFE-COURSE TRANSITIONS, GEOGRAPHY, & ELDERLY POVERTY (1R01AG011240-01). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3123214. Licensed CC0.

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