About

Mary C. Waters is the PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences and the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the integration of immigrants and their children, the transition to adulthood for the children of immigrants, intergroup relations, the measurement and meaning of racial and ethnic identity, and the social, demographic, and psychological impact of natural disasters. She has authored or co-authored 11 books and over 75 articles, contributing significantly to the field of sociology. Waters is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Her notable work includes the study "Inheriting the City: The Second Generation Comes of Age," co-authored with Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Jennifer Holdaway, which received multiple awards including the 2010 American Sociological Association Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award. Currently, she chairs the National Academy of Sciences Panel on The Integration of Immigrants into American Society and collaborates on research examining the role of government assistance in the integration of Latino immigrants in three American cities. Additionally, she leads the RISK Study, a longitudinal study of survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Geography
• Psychology
• Computer Security
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Economic growth
• Computer Science
• Environmental health
• Social psychology
• Ecology
• Environmental planning
• Economic geography
• Business
• Regional science
• Development economics

Selected publications

• Transit bus access to healthy, affordable food: A novel geographic information system (GIS) and community-informed analysis

  SSM - Population Health · 2025-01-13

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Good nutrition reduces the risk of chronic disease, but many vulnerable populations do not have equitable access to healthy food. People who are lower-income, non-White, older, or disabled, have increased likelihood of not owning a vehicle and of being dependent on public buses to source healthy, affordable food. Our study took place in three municipalities targeted by the Rhode Island Department of Health for equity-focused interventions. Our methodology aimed to overcome limitations of prior analyses of public transit food access. We determined healthy food sources, stratifying their affordability with market basket pricing data and community input. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we identified the transit bus service areas of the sources. Our novel approach included employing a fixed bus wait time, determining bus travel times based on schedule combined with historical data, and determining acceptable travel times through a community leader survey. We analyzed access by subgroups including those experiencing poverty, older adults, those without cars, and those with disabilities. We found that 45% of the population in the most urban municipality had bus access to discounted healthy food, and no one in the two less urban municipalities did. Bus access to six food pantries was limited to 15%–28% of the population. Our approach, combining spatial analysis informed by surveys and community input, can increase the ease and accuracy of analyzing bus access to healthy, affordable food and is replicable in other regions and extensible to other types of destinations and services and to rail transit. • Dependency on public transit is linked to inequities in healthy food access. • Public transit has not often been included in healthy food access analyses. • Our community input set the travel time and affordability/availability criteria. • No convenience, corner, or dollar store met criteria for a healthy food provider. • Our novel method can increase ease and accuracy of transit access assessments.

  PublisherDOI

• Weathering the Storm: Exploring the Use of the Strong Black Woman Role in the Coping Strategies of Black Women Survivors of Hurricane Katrina

  Women & Therapy · 2025-03-19

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  To protect against gendered racism, U.S. Black girls and women are socialized to be strong. This study explored the manifestations of the "Strong Black Woman" schema over time in the coping strategies of six Black women who survived Hurricane Katrina. Participants were all Black mothers, enrolled at a local community college, and ages 23-31 at the time of the first interview. All were interviewed three times between 2006 and 2018. Using narrative analysis on the longitudinal interviews, researchers identified themes highlighting how participants inherited, engaged with, and challenged expectations of the Strong Black Woman schema across their lives as daughters and mothers. Findings highlight the unique cultural and gendered pressures on Black women towards self-reliance and avoiding vulnerability, demonstrating the impact of structural oppression on help-seeking and the need for culturally appropriate interventions for survivors of disasters.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Predicting Post-Disaster Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Trajectories: The Role of Pre-Disaster Traumatic Experiences

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2024-06-08 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The mental health impact of disasters is substantial, with 30-40% of direct disaster victims developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is not yet clear why some people cope well with disaster-related trauma while others experience chronic dysfunction. Prior research on non-disaster trauma suggests that an individual's history of traumatic experiences earlier in the life course, prior to the disaster, may be a key factor in explaining variability in psychological responses to disasters. This study evaluated the extent to which pre-disaster trauma predicts PTSD trajectories in a sample of Hurricane Katrina survivors followed for 12 years after the storm. Four PTSD trajectories were identified using latent class growth analysis: Resistant (49.0%), Recovery (29.3%), Delayed-Onset (8.0%), and Chronic-High (13.7%). After adjusting for covariates, pre-Katrina trauma had only a small, positive impact on the probability of long-term, chronic Katrina-specific PTSD, and little effect on the probability of the Resistant and Delayed-Onset trajectories. Higher pre-Katrina trauma exposure moderately decreased the probability of being in the Recovery trajectory, in which Katrina-specific PTSD symptoms are initially high before declining over time. When covariates were added to the model one at a time, the association between pre-Katrina trauma and Chronic-High PTSD was attenuated most by the addition of Katrina-related trauma. Our findings suggest that while pre-disaster trauma exposure does not have a strong direct effect on chronic Katrina-specific PTSD, pre-Katrina trauma may impact PTSD through other factors that affect Katrina-related PTSD, such as by increasing the severity of Katrina-related trauma. These findings have important implications for the development of disaster preparedness strategies to diminish the long-term burden of disaster-related PTSD.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Becoming white or becoming mainstream? Defining the endpoint of assimilation

  2024-04-10

  book-chapterSenior author

  In this article we address some of the controversies that have arisen in the reception of Richard Alba’s work on changing patterns of ethnoracial diversity and the integration of immigrants. We parse some of the debates around the term ‘assimilation’, arguing that it is still a useful term for understanding the trajectories of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that Alba’s demographic analyses of the incorporation of post 1965 immigrants is an objective description of statistical changes in the population, but it is sometimes critiqued by scholars who point to subjective experiences of discrimination and prejudice among this population. We argue that this is best explained by the ‘integration paradox’ – greater integration leads to more, not less, feelings of exclusion, especially at the beginning of the process. We explore what Alba means when he discusses the expansion of the white racial category, and we review research on whiteness to bring attention to the question of whether the expansion of the mainstream and the blurring of the boundaries of whiteness are related. We stress the importance of differentiating between whiteness as a category, an identity, and an ideology.

  PublisherDOI

• Preparing for climate migration and integration: a policy and research agenda

  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2024-12-13 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Becoming white or becoming mainstream?: defining the endpoint of assimilation

  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2023-12-28 · 15 citations

  articleSenior author

  In this article we address some of the controversies that have arisen in the reception of Richard Alba's work on changing patterns of ethnoracial diversity and the integration of immigrants. We parse some of the debates around the term 'assimilation', arguing that it is still a useful term for understanding the trajectories of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that Alba's demographic analyses of the incorporation of post 1965 immigrants is an objective description of statistical changes in the population, but it is sometimes critiqued by scholars who point to subjective experiences of discrimination and prejudice among this population. We argue that this is best explained by the 'integration paradox' – greater integration leads to more, not less, feelings of exclusion, especially at the beginning of the process. We explore what Alba means when he discusses the expansion of the white racial category, and we review research on whiteness to bring attention to the question of whether the expansion of the mainstream and the blurring of the boundaries of whiteness are related. We stress the importance of differentiating between whiteness as a category, an identity, and an ideology.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Older Latino Immigrants

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2023-05-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Latino immigrants age sixty and older from Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Based on 178 interviews with immigrants in Florida and Massachusetts, this study identifies the financial and health hardships they endured, the kinds of government and nonprofit aid they accessed, the factors keeping many from accessing aid, and the coping strategies they adopted. Respondents faced unemployment, hunger, and loss of income. Unauthorized immigrants and people in mixed-status families were deliberately excluded from federal aid. Many other immigrants who qualified were reluctant or refused it. Immigrants without legal status and those who had more recently arrived were the most severely affected. Individuals and families responded to these challenges by doubling up, going without food and medicine, and working while sick. Greater outreach and more humane public policies could have prevented much of this suffering.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Psychosocial resources underlying disaster survivors’ posttraumatic stress symptom trajectories: insight from in-depth interviews with mothers who survived Hurricane Katrina

  European journal of psychotraumatology · 2023-06-19 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: Weather-related disasters, including hurricanes, are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. Vulnerable populations, such as people with low income and racial and ethnic minorities, are particularly prone to increased levels of physical harm and psychiatric adversity from weather-related events.Objectives: We aimed to explore psychosocial resources and coping of survivors with three different posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) trajectories (High-Decreasing, Moderate-Decreasing, and High-Stable), after Hurricane Katrina across two different time points: F1 (1-year post-disaster) and F3 (12 years post-disaster).Method: Participants in this multi-method study were part of a larger cohort of the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) project. Transcripts of interviews completed at the two time points were analysed using two qualitative methods, combining thematic analysis and narrative analysis, and providing both breadth of perspectives with the depth of specific case studies.Results: Sixteen survivors completed interviews at both F1 and F3. From our in-depth analysis of the data, we derived five inductive themes: ‘Hope,’ ‘Adaptive vs maladaptive avoidance,’ ‘Emotional delay,’ ‘Acceptance, Finding Meaning and Being in the Moment,’ and ‘Coping strategies.’ Survivors with High-Decreasing and Moderate-Decreasing PTSS trajectories experienced hope for future, accepted the hurricane and its results, and found efficient ways to cope with their situation. Survivors with High-Stable PTSS trajectories tended to express a lack of hope for future and struggled to be mindful and accept the hurricane and its harm. Unlike survivors with High-Decreasing and Moderate-Decreasing PTSS trajectories, survivors with High-Stable PTSS trajectories also reported less social and family support and faced more discrimination and racism.Conclusion: There are factors beyond individual-level psychosocial resources that may shape post-disaster resilience. When supporting survivors after a weather-related disaster, it is essential to provide ongoing psychological, financial, and physical assistance to bolster these resources.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• HELP-SEEKING IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY: EXPERIENCES OF OLDER LATINO IMMIGRANTS NAVIGATING ASSISTANCE IN AMERICA

  Innovation in Aging · 2023-12-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Access and utilization of assistance programs for older Latino immigrants focus on familismo or heavy reliance on family for help-seeking. The purpose of this paper is to document the different experiences of navigating services, including healthcare, for immigrants without family support. We also investigate the role of immigration status and age at migration on immigrants’ strategies for accessing and using social services. We conducted 141 in-depth interviews with immigrants 60 and over from Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. We used a grounded theory approach to code and analyze the data. Three themes shaped the variation we found in the strategies used by older Latino immigrants without family support: formal assistance rooted in state and local policies; age at migration and the resulting patterns of individual agency and resources, and variation by country of origin that captured legal statuses as well as social networks. Our study provides a deeper understanding of a hard-to-reach population’s access to and utilization of social services. It highlights the heterogeneity of Latino immigrants and elucidates differences from culture-based frameworks to understand Latino immigrants’ underutilization of social services later in life. We argue for a shift to perspectives that address how multiple structural dimensions intersect to impact older immigrants’ use of social services.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analyzing the long-term impact of post-disaster relocation and implications for disaster recovery policy

  International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction · 2022-01-06 · 12 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Core C - Data Management and Dissemination Core

  NIH · $2.7M · 2020

• NIH Grant R01HD057599

  NIH · $2.9M · 2015

• Core C - Data Management and Dissemination Core

  NIH · $11.2M · 2022

Frequent coauthors

• Philip Kasinitz

  28 shared

• Mariana Arcaya

  22 shared

• Jean E. Rhodes

  20 shared

• Sarah R. Lowe

  18 shared

• John Mollenkopf

  15 shared

• Meghan Zacher

  Brown University

  14 shared

• Stanley Lieberson

  13 shared

• Ethan J. Raker

  University of British Columbia

  12 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  Harvard University

  1980

• M.A., Sociology

  University of Chicago

  1975

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1972

Awards & honors

• Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected member of the American Philosophical Society