About

Linda Waite is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include social demography, aging, the family, health, sexuality, and social well-being. She is the Principal Investigator of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a population-based longitudinal study of health among older adults funded by the National Institute on Aging. This project employs a comprehensive approach to understanding the health and well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans through a nationally-representative survey first conducted in 2005, with subsequent reinterviews in 2010, 2015, and 2021. Under her leadership, the interdisciplinary team has developed advanced methods for measuring population health, including a COVID-19 study in 2020 to assess older adults' experiences during the pandemic. Her work has produced groundbreaking insights into the links between social relationships and various health outcomes, including physical, psychological, cognitive, and functional health. Waite has received notable recognition such as a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Psychiatry
• Social psychology
• Gerontology
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Internal medicine
• Environmental health
• Biology
• Demographic economics
• Law
• Neuroscience
• Audiology
• Economics
• Gender studies
• Demography

Selected publications

• Examining Longitudinal Relationships between Social Support and Strain in Relationships with Children and Older Adults’ Cognitive Functioning

  Journal of Health and Social Behavior · 2025-04-25

  articleOpen access

  Relationships with children are often highly salient to older adults and can be characterized by both social support and strain. Although research suggests that social support and strain are linked to older adults' cognitive functioning, few studies have considered reciprocal effects or examined potential explanatory mechanisms. This study uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7,639) to examine longitudinal, bidirectional relationships between social support and strain in relationships with children and cognitive functioning among older U.S. adults. Results from dynamic panel models suggest that higher social support from children predicts modestly better later cognitive functioning and that strain from children is negatively linked to subsequent cognition. Older adults with higher cognitive functioning report less later strain in relationships with children. Depressive symptoms and receipt of children's help with functional limitations play modest roles in helping to explain associations between social support and strain from children and cognitive functioning.

  PublisherDOI

• Partner Relationship Quality and Inclusion of Intimate Partners as Network Confidants of Older Adults

  Innovation in Aging · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Robust social networks and high-quality intimate partnerships each promote health in later life, but little is known about how older adults integrate spouses and partners into their core discussion networks. Using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), this paper examines the likelihood that older adults name their spouse or partner as a “core confidant” and how relationship quality shapes that designation. Among 1,844 respondents with an intimate partner, nearly one in four did not list that partner as a confidant. Naming a spouse as a confidant is strongly predicted by positive indicators of relationship quality, including time spent together, partner support, and relationship satisfaction. Conversely, partner strain lowers the probability of inclusion. The link between relationship support and confidant naming is most pronounced for highly educated respondents. We discuss the findings as reflecting social inequalities in the ability to integrate intimate ties into broader networks.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sex Differences in Sexual Motivation Among U.S. Residents 57–85 Years of Age

  Archives of Sexual Behavior · 2025-05-01

  articleOpen access

  Sexual motivation includes proceptivity (mental or physical pursuit of sexual gratification) and receptivity (openness to having sex initiated by someone else). The roles of these two components are not well understood in older adults past reproductive age. We quantify these components and their associations with sexual activity along with differences in sex, age, partner status, health, reproductive steroids and other demographic variables collected during home interviews for the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project's nationally representative sample of 3005, 57-85 years old community-dwelling U.S. residents. The majority of older adults had sex and age had only a modest association with their sexual motivation. Proceptive and receptive sexual motivation were independent of each other and each was associated with higher odds of having sex more frequently. Relative to women, men reported higher levels of sexual proceptivity, controlling for demographic and biological variables such as medications, diseases, education, partner status, reproductive steroid levels, and age. Women reported higher sexual receptivity than did men. Although men had higher free salivary testosterone levels, it was associated with higher proceptivity and receptivity within both men and women. DHEA and estradiol were also associated with variations in sexual motivation. Nonetheless, sex differences in each component of sexual motivation remained after controlling for reproductive steroid levels along with demographics and partner status. Having a positive emotional relationship was associated with higher proceptive sexual motivation in women but not in men.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• It is not what you weigh, it is how you present it: body size, attractiveness, physical functioning, and access to partnership and sexuality for older men and women

  Social Forces · 2025-04-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Physical attractiveness has been linked to better economic, dyadic, and health outcomes but is understudied. We focus here on the gendered implications of attractiveness for one component of social well-being, access to intimate partnership and sexuality, among older adults. In addition, we examine the role of body size, as measured and rated by an observer, in evaluating attractiveness and the diverging consequences for women and men. We use data from Rounds 1 (2005–2006) and 2 (2010–2011) of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N = 2,144) to explore the association of two measures of body size, weight relative to height (body mass index [BMI]) and interviewer assessments of body size, with sexual behavior that requires a partner and sexual behavior that does not. We find that at larger body sizes as reflected in both the BMI and rated body shape, women—but not men—face a lower probability of having a partner and engaging in partnered sex, and a lower frequency of vaginal intercourse and receiving sexual touch. These associations are mediated by physical functioning for the BMI and by attractiveness as rated by the interviewer for rated body shape. We also find that women—but not men—are more likely to report finding sex not pleasurable at a higher BMI, which partly operates through the mechanism of functional limitations. We suggest that these findings reflect different attractiveness standards for men and women, which reduce women’s access to partners and partnered sex but not solitary sex, such as masturbation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Yours, mine, and ours: Childhood disadvantage and late-life social connectedness in marital dyads

  Social Science Research · 2025-12-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ENTWINED LIVES: THE DYADIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY AND SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS AMONG OLDER COUPLES

  Innovation in Aging · 2024-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been linked to disadvantages along the life course. However, little is known about how ACEs may affect one’s own and spousal social connectedness in later life. Using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N=1,214 couples), we employ the actor-partner interdependence model to estimate the long-term dyadic influence of ACE on later-life community participation and social network structure. We find that ACEs (including early-life family unhappiness, absence of parents in the household, poor health, witnessing/experiencing violence, being born in the U.S. South, and low parental education) are associated with reduced later-life community participation and smaller network sizes. Additionally, we find that the spousal spillover effects of ACEs are more pronounced from wives to husbands in fostering social ties than from husbands to wives in engaging with formal community participation. Our findings highlight the spillover effect of childhood disadvantages on spousal later-life social connectedness and its gendered implications.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measuring Cognitive Function and Cognitive Decline With Response Time Data in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project

  The Journals of Gerontology Series B · 2024-04-05 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVES: Scholarly, clinical, and policy interest in cognitive function has grown over the last several decades in part due to large increases in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias as populations age. However, adequate measures of cognitive function have not been available in many research data sets. We argue that a wealth of previously unexploited survey data exists to model cognition and cognitive decline. METHODS: We use metadata of the time it takes older respondents in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Survey, which we label response times (RTs), to answer questions in a standard cognitive assessment. We compare several measures of RT to a survey-adapted form of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). RESULTS: We show that RTs predict both concurrent and future MoCA scores. Our results show that longer and more varied RT at baseline predict lower MoCA scores 5 years later, net of baseline scores and controls. We also show that the effect of RT measures on predicting current MoCA differs for individuals of different races and ages, but are not different by gender. DISCUSSION: Our paper demonstrates that RTs constitute a separate powerful measure of cognitive functioning. RTs may be remarkably useful both to clinicians and social scientists because they can increase the accuracy of cognitive assessment without increasing the time it takes to administer the assessment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• STUDYING LGBT OLDER ADULTS

  Innovation in Aging · 2024-12-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The size of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) population in the U.S. is estimated to be at 9 to 11 million people (about 3.5–4.5%) and is expected to grow in the future. LGBT populations persistently experience health disparities across multiple physical and mental, which widen over the life course. The study of the older LGBT population would benefit from a nationally-representative, longitudinal study with information on health outcomes but also on the social mechanisms at work that may exacerbate or ameliorate these disparities. The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has recently called for more targeted research aimed at understanding the sources and consequences of these health disparities, particularly among older LGBT adults. The papers in this session focus on strategies to carry out such as study. O’Muircheartaigh and Schumm describe a novel strategy for recruiting such a sample; Lauderdale and Meyer present recent data mental and physical health in a small pilot study using this strategy; Johns et al. study differences in social characteristics and health for LGBT versus other older adults in two nationally-representative samples; and Azar et al. present international comparisons of these differences in the UK and the US. Together these papers add to our understanding of health and health disparities in older sexual minorities and how we might learn more about them.

  PublisherDOI

• Marrying Early or Remaining Single in Taiwan: The Choice of Young Adults

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• From safety to frustration: The neural substrates of inhibitory learning in aversive and appetitive conditioning procedures

  Neurobiology of Learning and Memory · 2023 · 33 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology

  Inhibitory associative learning counters the effects of excitatory learning, whether appetitively or aversively motivated. Moreover, the affective responses accompanying the inhibitory associations are of opponent valence to the excitatory conditioned responses. Inhibitors for negative aversive outcomes (e.g. shock) signal safety, while inhibitors for appetitive outcomes (e.g. food reward) elicit frustration and/or disappointment. This raises the question as to whether studies using appetitive and aversive conditioning procedures should demonstrate the same neural substrates for inhibitory learning. We review the neural substrates of appetitive and aversive inhibitory learning as measured in different procedural variants and in the context of the underpinning excitatory conditioning on which it depends. The mesocorticolimbic dopamine pathways, retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus are consistently implicated in inhibitory learning. Further neural substrates identified in some procedural variants may be related to the specific motivation of the learning task and modalities of the learning cues. Finally, we consider the translational implications of our understanding of the neural substrates of inhibitory learning, for obesity and addictions as well as for anxiety disorders.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AG033903

  NIH · $5.8M · 2015

• NIH Grant P20AG012857

  NIH · $1.8M · 1999

• National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project: Rounds 4.2 and 4.4

  NIH · $42.7M · 2013–2027

• National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project: Round 5

  NIH · $48.2M · 2014–2029

• NIH Grant R01AG021487

  NIH · $12.2M · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• Louise C. Hawkley

  National Opinion Research Center

  35 shared

• L. Philip Schumm

  University of Chicago

  32 shared

• Ashwin Kotwal

  University of California, San Francisco

  32 shared

• Kristen Wroblewski

  Chicago Department of Public Health

  28 shared

• Edward O. Laumann

  University of Chicago

  24 shared

• William Dale

  City of Hope

  22 shared

• Megan Huisingh‐Scheetz

  University of Chicago

  21 shared

• Diane S. Lauderdale

  Chicago Department of Public Health

  19 shared

Awards & honors

• MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging, National I…
• Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences