Robert Hummer

About

Robert Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His areas of interest include demography, population health, aging, and the life course. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. from Florida State University in 1993 and 1990, respectively, and his B.A. from Adrian College in 1985. His professional background includes positions at the University of Texas at Austin from 1996 to 2015, Louisiana State University from 1995 to 1996, and East Carolina University from 1993 to 1995. Hummer's work focuses on understanding demographic processes and health outcomes related to aging populations, contributing to the fields of population studies and social sciences.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Gerontology
• Demography
• Environmental health
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms Across Early- and Mid-Life Among the Add Health Cohort

  Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities · 2020 · 119 citations

  DOI

• Social Inequality and the Future of US Life Expectancy

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2021 · 63 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Despite decades of progress, the future of life expectancy in the United States is uncertain due to widening socioeconomic disparities in mortality, continued disparities in mortality across racial/ethnic groups, and an increase in extrinsic causes of death. These trends prompt us to scrutinize life expectancy in a high-income but enormously unequal society like the United States, where social factors determine who is most able to maximize their biological lifespan. After reviewing evidence for…

  DOI

• 14. Religious Involvement and Mortality Risk among Pre-Retirement Aged U.S. Adults

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2020 · 58 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  A growing body of research demonstrates that higher levels of religious involvement are associated with lower adult mortality risks in the United States. While a handful of clinically- and community-based studies have considered the impacts of private religiosity and strength and comfort received from religious faith on survival status among the elderly (e.g., Helm et al. 2000; Oxman et al. 1995), the vast majority of sociological and epidemiological research in the area has focused on the most…

  DOI

• Religion, Families, and Health

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2020 · 17 citations

  Religion is a major social institution in the United States. While the scientific community has experienced a resurgence in the idea that there are important linkages between religion and family life and religion and health outcomes, this area of study is still in its early stages of development, scattered across multiple disciplines, and of uneven quality. To date, no book has featured both reviews of the literature and new empirical findings that define this area for the present and set the ag…

  DOI

• Gazing into the crystal ball: Do adolescent survival expectations predict premature mortality risk in the United States?

  Social Science & Medicine · 2024-11-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America Renewal

  NIH · $4.8M · 2014–2029

• Administrative and Research Support Core

  NIH · $5.2M · 2020–2027

• Population Research Center

  NIH · $11.5M · 2002–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Richard G. Rogers

  79 shared

• Charles B. Nam

  27 shared

• Patrick M. Krueger

  University of Colorado Denver

  19 shared

• Erin R. Hamilton

  University of California, Davis

  17 shared

• Elizabeth Lawrence

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  16 shared

• Brian Karl Finch

  University of Southern California

  15 shared

• Kathleen Mullan Harris

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  14 shared

• W. Parker Frisbie

  12 shared

Similar researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Kenneth Bollenh-79
• Arne Kallebergh-73