About

Emily Smith-Greenaway is Associate Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her research areas include demography, health, mortality, bereavement, inequality, family, and international sociology. Broadly, her research examines how social conditions impact individual and family wellbeing and experiences. Her recent work analyzes the influence of mortality conditions on family systems, the impact of child loss on family dynamics, and the consequences of community mortality conditions for women's fertility. She also studies how social inequality influences young adults’ educational, childbearing, and marital experiences. Her research has been published in top academic journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Demography, Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science and Medicine, Population and Development Review, and Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Her work has garnered media attention from outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic, CNN, and The Boston Globe. She has received multiple awards for her research contributions, including being named a Max Planck Society Sabbatical Laureate in 2019, USC’s Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award in 2018, and an ASA Distinguished Early Career Award through the Children and Youth Section in 2018. Smith-Greenaway’s research has been supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Max Planck Society, and the American Association of University Women. She enjoys mentoring and teaching students, advising PhD students across several programs, and regularly teaching courses such as Demographic Techniques, Social Demography, Society and Population, and Population and Social Change.

Research topics

• Demography
• Sociology
• Economic geography
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Anthropology
• Psychiatry
• Medicine
• Developmental psychology
• Psychology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Kinship, Demography, and Inequality: Review and Key Areas for Future Development

  2022 · 21 citations

  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Geography

  Kinship relations play a crucial role in structuring populations and shaping individual outcomes. Differences in kinship among individuals, cohorts, and subpopulations are one important aspect of these structures. Demography and related disciplines have proposed sophisticated approaches to study kinship in recent years. We argue that the development of a demography of kinship that centers on these processes will help advance the field of demography as a whole. Here, we review four key substantive areas of kinship research in demography: (1) kin supply and intergenerational transfers; (2) demographic change; (3) kin loss; and (4) social stratification. For each area, we identify important gaps in the literature and avenues for future research. We then review available methods and data sources to advance each of these areas, and conclude with an agenda to foster the study of the demography of kinship in general and kinship inequalities specifically.

  DOI

• Bereavement & mental health: The generational consequences of a grandparent's death

  SSM - Mental Health · 2022 · 14 citations

  • Demography
  • Psychology
  • Medicine

  The COVID-19 pandemic has left millions of children and adolescents grieving the sudden death of a grandparent. Yet, we lack knowledge of the mental health implications of a grandparent's death for youth. This study uses longitudinal data to examine if the loss of a grandparent increases adolescent grandchildren's likelihood of experiencing their mothers' major depressive disorder, and of having depressive symptoms themselves. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a population-based cohort study of children born in 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000, we estimate associations between the death of a maternal grandparent in mid-childhood and adolescents', and their mothers', depressive outcomes when the adolescent is roughly age 15 (in 2014-17), net of a robust set of covariates, including pre-bereavement depression. Adjusted regression models show no elevated depression risk associated with a grandfather's death-neither for adolescents nor their mothers. A grandmother's death within the previous seven years is associated with a higher likelihood of adolescents having a depressed mother compared to both non-bereaved adolescents (odds ratio (OR) = 2.42; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.17, 5.01) and those whose grandmother died more than seven years ago (OR = 3.78; 95% CI = 1.54, 9.31). Furthermore, adolescent boys have a 50% increase in their depressive symptoms following a grandmother's death relative to their non-bereaved peers-an increase that operates independently from the influence of the death on their mother. Together, the results show the death of a grandmother is an underappreciated, persistent risk factor for adolescents experiencing maternal major depressive disorder, and for adolescent boys experiencing depressive symptoms personally.

  DOI

• Maternal cumulative prevalence measures of child mortality show heavy burden in sub-Saharan Africa

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 41 citations

  • Demography
  • Medicine
  • Environmental health

  We advance a set of population-level indicators that quantify the prevalence of mothers who have ever experienced an infant, under 5-y-old child, or any-age child die. The maternal cumulative prevalence of infant mortality (mIM), the maternal cumulative prevalence of under 5 mortality (mU5M), and the maternal cumulative prevalence of offspring mortality (mOM) bring theoretical and practical value to a variety of disciplines. Here we introduce maternal cumulative prevalence measures of mortality for multiple age groups of mothers in 20 sub-Saharan African countries with Demographic and Health Surveys data spanning more than two decades. The exercise demonstrates the persistently high prevalence of African mothers who have ever experienced a child die. In some African countries, more than one-half of 45- to 49-y-old mothers have experienced the death of a child under age 5, and nearly two-thirds have experienced the death of any child, irrespective of age. Fewer young mothers have experienced a child die, yet in many countries, up to one-third have. Our results show that the mIM and mU5M can follow distinct trajectories from the infant mortality rate (IMR) and under 5 mortality rate (U5MR), offering an experiential view of mortality decline that annualized measures conceal. These measures can be adapted to quantify the prevalence of recurrent offspring mortality (mROM) and calculated for subgroups to identify within-country inequality in the mortality burden. These indicators can be used to improve current understandings of mortality change, bereavement as a public health threat, and population dynamics.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sangeetha Madhavan

  University of Maryland, College Park

  3 shared

• Martin Kolk

  Stockholm University

  2 shared

• Ashton M. Verdery

  Pennsylvania State University

  2 shared

• Rachel Margolis

  Western University

  2 shared

• Xi Song

  University of Pennsylvania

  1 shared

• Kevin J. A. Thomas

  1 shared

• Diego Alburez‐Gutierrez

  Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

  1 shared

• Hal Caswell

  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Max Planck Society Sabbatical Laureate (2019)
• USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award (20…
• ASA Distinguished Early Career Award, Children and Youth Sec…
• Sabbatical Laureate, Max Planck Society, Human Sciences Sect…

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