Ken R Smith
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3770968 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ken R Smith |
| PRENOMES | Ken R |
| SOBRENOME | Smith |
| ASSINATURA | SMITH K R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Utah |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 60 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 408 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1986 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
In Utero Selection Echoes Across a Lifetime
The sex ratio at birth in 19th and early 20th century cohorts gauges important demographic selection processes that appear detectable well into older age
How Cause-Specific Mortality Contributes to Sex Differences in Life Expectancy over Time. Trends in Utah and Denmark
Female life expectancy exceeds male life expectancy. To better understand the basis for this discrepancy, we use Arriaga decomposition methods to examine differences in life expectancy by exploring age-specific and cause-specific mortality differences between the sexes and how these differences arise over time and between two distinct populations, Denmark and Utah (U.S.). Our focus is on how specific causes point to shifts in secular circumstance…
Sun protection, sunburn, tanning, and family factors among melanoma survivors and their minor children
Use of recommended sun protection strategies among minor children of melanoma survivors is suboptimal and as a result, these children receive excess ultraviolet radiation exposure that further increases their melanoma risk. Among a sample of 368 melanoma survivor-child dyads, the relationship between family-focused factors and child sun protection and related outcomes was examined, as well as the relations of family factors with individual sun-pr…
Mortality risk following end-of-life caregiving
Introduction
Over the last 60 years several major historical databases with reconstructed life courses of large populations spanning decades have been launched. The development of these databases is indicative of considerable investments that have greatly expanded the possibilities for new research within the fields of history, demography, sociology, as well as other disciplines. In this volume spanning seven articles, eight databases are included that have h…
The Utah Population Database. A Model for Linking Medical and Genealogical Records for Population Health Research
Improving our understanding of the socio-environmental and genetic bases of disease and health outcomes among individuals, families, and populations over time requires extensive longitudinal data on multiple attributes for entire communities, states or nations. This requirement can be difficult to achieve. In this paper we describe a successful example of a database that meets these needs. The Utah Population Database (UPDB) is a unique and power…
The Utah Population Database. The Legacy of Four Decades of Demographic Research
This paper summarizes the unique characteristics of the Utah Population Database (UPDB) and how it has catalyzed demographic, social and medical research since the mid-1970s. The UPDB is one of the world’s richest sources of linked population-based information for demographic, genetic, and epidemiological studies at the Individual-level. UPDB has supported hundreds of demographic and biomedical investigations, with heavy emphasis on families, in …
Frail Males on the American Frontier
While sex ratios at birth (SRB) have been shown to vary within and across populations, after over a century of research, explanations have remained elusive. A variety of ecological, demographic, economic, and social variables have been evaluated, yet their association with SRB has been equivocal. Here, in an attempt to shed light on this unresolved topic within the literature, we approach the question of what drives variation in SRB using detaile…
The Effects of Marital Status, Fertility, and Bereavement on Adult Mortality in Polygamous and Monogamous Households
Although the associations among marital status, fertility, bereavement, and adult mortality have been widely studied, much less is known about these associations in polygamous households, which remain prevalent across much of the world. We use data from the Utah Population Database on 110,890 women and 106,979 men born up to 1900, with mortality follow-up into the twentieth century. We examine how the number of wife deaths affects male mortality …
The Long Harm of Childhood
How do early-life conditions affect adult mortality? Research has yielded mixed evidence about the influence of infant and child mortality in birth cohorts on adult health and mortality. Studies rarely consider the specific role of mortality within the family. We estimated how individuals' exposure to mortality as a child is related to their adult mortality risk between ages 18 and 85 in two historical populations, Utah (USA) 1874-2015 and Zeelan…
Sex ratios and life tables
The male/female sex ratio (SR) and its age-specific patterns vary considerably across time and place. The SR generally begins male-biased at birth and becomes female-biased later in life, but this relationship should respond to historical trends and events. Temporal trends in SRs remain largely unstudied and formal demographic relationships are not well defined. We (1) define SRs in a life table framework, (2) estimate the age at which the number…
Neighbourhood looking glass
BACKGROUND: Neighbourhood quality has been connected with an array of health issues, but neighbourhood research has been limited by the lack of methods to characterise large geographical areas. This study uses innovative computer vision methods and a new big data source of street view images to automatically characterise neighbourhood built environments. METHODS: A total of 430 000 images were obtained using Google's Street View Image API for Sal…
Tykes, Toddlers, Teens, and Twins of Robust Mothers
at older ages in certain categories of male singleton offspring - a likely reflection of mortality selection. The findings suggest that while bearing twins may reflect a robust maternal phenotype, the toll of bearing twins may disadvantage subsequent offspring, especially during infancy
Analyzing walking route choice through built environments using random forests and discrete choice techniques
Walking is a form of active transportation with numerous benefits, including better health outcomes, lower environmental impacts and stronger communities. Understanding built environmental associations with walking behavior is a key step towards identifying design features that support walking. Human mobility data available through GPS receivers and cell phones, combined with high resolution walkability data, provide a rich source of georeference…
Transit Rider Body Mass Index Before and After Completion of Street Light-Rail Line in Utah
Objectives. To determine whether 2012 to 2015 (times 1–3) ridership changes correlated with body mass index (BMI) changes after transit line completion in Salt Lake City, Utah. Methods. We used Global Positioning System/accelerometry–measured transit ridership measures in 2012 to 2013 (times 1–2) to compare objective and self-reported ridership. Regression models related changes in objectively measured ridership (times 1–2) and self-reported ride…
Geotagged US Tweets as Predictors of County-Level Health Outcomes, 2015–2016
Objectives. To leverage geotagged Twitter data to create national indicators of the social environment, with small-area indicators of prevalent sentiment and social modeling of health behaviors, and to test associations with county-level health outcomes, while controlling for demographic characteristics. Methods. We used Twitter’s streaming application programming interface to continuously collect a random 1% subset of publicly available geo-loca…
Socio-economic status and fertility decline
The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and c…
Family Member Deaths in Childhood Predict Systemic Inflammation in Late Life
Biological and epidemiological evidence has linked early-life psychosocial stress with late-life health, with inflammation as a potential mechanism. We report here the association between familial death in childhood and adulthood and increased levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of systemic inflammation. The Cache County Memory Study is a prospective study of persons initially aged 65 and older in 1995. In 2002, there we…
The joint effects of family risk of obesity and neighborhood environment on obesity among women
Is Cancer Protective for Subsequent Alzheimer’s Disease Risk? Evidence From the Utah Population Database
Careful consideration of model specification and the profound effects of mortality selection in the older adult population is essential when investigating the relationship between aging-related diseases such as cancer and AD. We show that cancer does not provide protection from AD as previously described in the literature. Social scientists seeking to understand social disparities in disease outcomes among older adults may therefore want to stron…
Offspring Socioeconomic Status and Parent Mortality Within a Historical Population
Considering a network approach to health determinants, we test the hypothesis that benefits of high socioeconomic status (SES) may be transmitted up the generational ladder from offspring to parents. Studies that examine own SES and own health outcomes, or SES of parents and outcomes of young or adolescent children, are common. Those that investigate SES of offspring and their association with parental health are rare. Employing data from a histo…
Differential Vulnerability to Early-Life Parental Death
Only a portion of those individuals exposed to parental death in early life (PDE) develop behavioral health disorders. We utilized demographic pedigree data from the Utah Population Database to test for differential vulnerability to PDE by creating a risk score of familial susceptibility to suicide (FS) at the population level. Using logistic panel regression models, we tested for multiplicative interactions between PDE and FS on the risks of maj…
Marriage Markets and Male Mating Effort
Early Life Influences on Health and Mortality in Adulthood
Family Health Histories and Their Impact on Retirement Confidence
As members of the public become increasingly aware of how genetics and other family factors affect intergenerational transmission of chronic diseases, it is likely that the link between family health histories and retirement confidence will intensify
Effects of childhood and middle-adulthood family conditions on later-life mortality
Marital Transitions, Poverty, and Gender Differences in Mortality
Studies of the causes of marital status differentials in mortality have generally concluded that marriage serves to protect individuals from premature death. The analyses presented in this article extend this work by examining how recent marital transitions and associated levels of economic status affect mortality. With a health production model and micro-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics [for the United States] sex-specific prop…
Running to the Store? The relationship between neighborhood environments and the risk of obesity
Linked Lives, Dependent Demise? Survival Analysis of Husbands and Wives
Past research has found that married individuals have substantially lower risks of mortality than their single counterparts. This paper examines how household characteristics affect spouses’ risks of mortality. A paired hazard rate model is estimated and tests are made to ascertain whether the estimated coefficients associated with risk factors differ between husbands’ and wives’ equations. Cigarette smoking, risk-avoidance behavior, poverty, and…
Double Jeopardy
The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that marital and poverty status interact in their effects on mortality risks beyond their main effects. This study examines the epidemiological bases for applying an additive rather than a multiplicative specification when testing for interaction between two discrete risk factors. We specifically predict that risks associated with being nonmarried and with being poor .interact to produce mort…
Historical trends of survival among widows and widowers
Children's, adolescents', and young adults' thinking about different types of disagreements
Survival of offspring who experience early parental death
Prenatal care among immigrant and racial-ethnic minority women in a new immigrant destination
Remarriage patterns among recent widows and widowers
Remarriage is one of the most important determinants of physical and economic well-being among the widowed. The goal of this study is to estimate how hazard rates for remarriage vary among widows and widowers on the basis of both observable and unobservable characteristics. The remarriage estimates rely on nationally representative samples of widows and widowers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Continuous-time hazard rate regressions indi…
Clarifying hierarchical age-period-cohort models
Socio-economic status and fertility decline
The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and c…
Offspring Socioeconomic Status and Parent Mortality Within a Historical Population
Considering a network approach to health determinants, we test the hypothesis that benefits of high socioeconomic status (SES) may be transmitted up the generational ladder from offspring to parents. Studies that examine own SES and own health outcomes, or SES of parents and outcomes of young or adolescent children, are common. Those that investigate SES of offspring and their association with parental health are rare. Employing data from a histo…
Recent Widowhood, Remarriage, and Changes in Economic Well-Being
This research examines how changes in family composition due to the death of a spouse and subsequent remarriage affect economic status. The results of both descriptive analyses and a test of a simple multivariate model show that the death of a spouse translates into a substantial economic loss particularly for widows. Furthermore the economic gains for both widows and widowers who remarry are generally large compared to those of persons who remai…
The Incidence of Poverty among the Recently Widowed
Taking a life-course perspective in the analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines severalfactors that mediate the economic consequences of widowhood. Emphasis is given in the analysis to the possible mediating influences of six life-course variables: income in the yearprior to the widowhood event, the calendaryear of widowhood, age at widowhood, sex, years of marriage, and past work experience. Logistic regress…
Marriage Markets and Male Mating Effort
Life and death in the family
Harvesting More Than Vegetables
Objectives. We examined the association of participation in community gardening with healthy body weight. Methods. We examined body mass index (BMI) data from 198 community gardening participants in Salt Lake City, Utah, in relationship to BMI data for 3 comparison groups: neighbors, siblings, and spouses. In comparisons, we adjusted for gender, age, and the year of the BMI measurement. Results. Both women and men community gardeners had signific…
Fertility and post-reproductive longevity
We examine the effects of reproduction on longevity among mothers and fathers after age 60. This study is motivated by evolutionary theories of aging and theories predicting social benefits and costs of children to older parents. We use the Utah Population Database, that includes a large genealogical database from the Utah Family History Library. Cox proportional hazard models based on 13,987 couples married between 1860-1899 indicate that women …
Passage Through Midlife
Life course researchers have recently examined the effects of normative and non-normative pathways into adulthood but little theoretical or empirical attention has been directed at the manner and type of transitions through the middle years of the life span for women. Women in midlife typically watch their last child leave the home and significant numbers also experience the dissolution of their marriages, either by divorce or widowhood. Using da…
Effects of neighborhood walkability on healthy weight
Are Girls Good and Boys Bad for Parental Longevity
The Long Harm of Childhood
How do early-life conditions affect adult mortality? Research has yielded mixed evidence about the influence of infant and child mortality in birth cohorts on adult health and mortality. Studies rarely consider the specific role of mortality within the family. We estimated how individuals' exposure to mortality as a child is related to their adult mortality risk between ages 18 and 85 in two historical populations, Utah (USA) 1874-2015 and Zeelan…
Neighbourhood looking glass
BACKGROUND: Neighbourhood quality has been connected with an array of health issues, but neighbourhood research has been limited by the lack of methods to characterise large geographical areas. This study uses innovative computer vision methods and a new big data source of street view images to automatically characterise neighbourhood built environments. METHODS: A total of 430 000 images were obtained using Google's Street View Image API for Sal…
Geotagged US Tweets as Predictors of County-Level Health Outcomes, 2015–2016
Objectives. To leverage geotagged Twitter data to create national indicators of the social environment, with small-area indicators of prevalent sentiment and social modeling of health behaviors, and to test associations with county-level health outcomes, while controlling for demographic characteristics. Methods. We used Twitter’s streaming application programming interface to continuously collect a random 1% subset of publicly available geo-loca…
The Incidence of Poverty among the Recently Widowed
Taking a life-course perspective in the analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines severalfactors that mediate the economic consequences of widowhood. Emphasis is given in the analysis to the possible mediating influences of six life-course variables: income in the yearprior to the widowhood event, the calendaryear of widowhood, age at widowhood, sex, years of marriage, and past work experience. Logistic regress…
Gender and Poverty among the Widowed
Recent Widowhood, Remarriage, and Changes in Economic Well-Being
This research examines how changes in family composition due to the death of a spouse and subsequent remarriage affect economic status. The results of both descriptive analyses and a test of a simple multivariate model show that the death of a spouse translates into a substantial economic loss particularly for widows. Furthermore the economic gains for both widows and widowers who remarry are generally large compared to those of persons who remai…
Passage Through Midlife
Life course researchers have recently examined the effects of normative and non-normative pathways into adulthood but little theoretical or empirical attention has been directed at the manner and type of transitions through the middle years of the life span for women. Women in midlife typically watch their last child leave the home and significant numbers also experience the dissolution of their marriages, either by divorce or widowhood. Using da…
Remarriage patterns among recent widows and widowers
Remarriage is one of the most important determinants of physical and economic well-being among the widowed. The goal of this study is to estimate how hazard rates for remarriage vary among widows and widowers on the basis of both observable and unobservable characteristics. The remarriage estimates rely on nationally representative samples of widows and widowers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Continuous-time hazard rate regressions indi…
Marital Transitions, Poverty, and Gender Differences in Mortality
Studies of the causes of marital status differentials in mortality have generally concluded that marriage serves to protect individuals from premature death. The analyses presented in this article extend this work by examining how recent marital transitions and associated levels of economic status affect mortality. With a health production model and micro-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics [for the United States] sex-specific prop…
Linked Lives, Dependent Demise? Survival Analysis of Husbands and Wives
Past research has found that married individuals have substantially lower risks of mortality than their single counterparts. This paper examines how household characteristics affect spouses’ risks of mortality. A paired hazard rate model is estimated and tests are made to ascertain whether the estimated coefficients associated with risk factors differ between husbands’ and wives’ equations. Cigarette smoking, risk-avoidance behavior, poverty, and…
Double Jeopardy
The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that marital and poverty status interact in their effects on mortality risks beyond their main effects. This study examines the epidemiological bases for applying an additive rather than a multiplicative specification when testing for interaction between two discrete risk factors. We specifically predict that risks associated with being nonmarried and with being poor .interact to produce mort…
Risk of mortality following widowhood
This study examines how spouses' deaths from sudden or lengthy illnesses differentially affect the mortality risks of surviving widows and widowers by age. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find the mortality risk differs by gender, age, and type of widowhood. For nonelderly ( or = 65) widows, the mortality risk is lower than that of comparably aged married women when their husbands died after a long-term illness. These gender, age, an…
Children's health and their mothers’ risk of divorce or separation
The purpose of this study is to determine how children's health conditions are related to their mothers' risk of divorce or separation. The study is based on data from over 7,000 children born to once-married mothers identified in the 1988 Child Health Supplement to the National Health Interview Survey. The effects of 15 childhood health conditions on the mothers' risk of divorce are estimated with Cox's proportional hazard models. Controlling fo…
An Introduction to the Analysis of Paired Hazard Rates in Studies of the Family
Hazard rate models in studies of the family are becoming more common. Ironically family studies scholars have generally used these techniques based on individuals rather than explicitly on couples or families. We describe and apply selected techniques used to analyze paired hazard rates when event times are right censored. We illustrate the techniques by looking at mortality patterns in husbands and wives. Recently developed measures and models a…
Children's, adolescents', and young adults' thinking about different types of disagreements
Fertility and post-reproductive longevity
We examine the effects of reproduction on longevity among mothers and fathers after age 60. This study is motivated by evolutionary theories of aging and theories predicting social benefits and costs of children to older parents. We use the Utah Population Database, that includes a large genealogical database from the Utah Family History Library. Cox proportional hazard models based on 13,987 couples married between 1860-1899 indicate that women …
Historical trends of survival among widows and widowers
Double impact
Most prior research on the adverse consequences of parental divorce has analyzed only one child per family. As a result, it is not known whether the same divorce affects siblings differently. We address this issue by analyzing paired sibling data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) and 1994 Survey of American Families (SAF). Both seemingly unrelated regressions and random effects models are used to study the effect of family background on o…
Walkability and Body Mass Index
Are Girls Good and Boys Bad for Parental Longevity
Family Structure Transitions and Child Achievement
This article uses prospective data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to investigate how children in divorced and never-married-mother families vary in reading and math achievement after parental remarriage. These are compared to children who remain in never-married, divorced, and continuously married families. Results based on growth curve modeling indicate that children remaining in single-parent families resulting from divorce…
Is there a trade‐off between fertility and longevity? A comparative study of women from three large historical databases accounting for mortality selection
Frontier populations provide exceptional opportunities to test the hypothesis of a trade‐off between fertility and longevity. In such populations, mechanisms favoring reproduction usually find fertile ground, and if these mechanisms reduce longevity, demographers should observe higher postreproductive mortality among highly fertile women. We test this hypothesis using complete female reproductive histories from three large demographic databases: …
Are You What Your Mother Weighs? Evaluating the Impact of Maternal Weight Trajectories on Youth Overweight
Brief communication
Women who have outlived child‐bearing have long been described as postreproductive. But contributions they make to the survival or fertility of their descendants enhance the reproduction of their genes. Consequently, natural selection affects this characteristic stage of human life history. Grandmother effects can be measured in data sets that include births and deaths over several generations, but unmeasured covariates complicate the task. Here …
Running to the Store? The relationship between neighborhood environments and the risk of obesity
Effects of childhood and middle-adulthood family conditions on later-life mortality
Mating system change reduces the strength of sexual selection in an American frontier population of the 19th century
Prenatal care among immigrant and racial-ethnic minority women in a new immigrant destination
Demography (49 obras) · Medicine (41 obras) · Sociology (39 obras) · Population (35 obras) · Psychology (32 obras) · Gerontology (30 obras) · Demography (24 obras) · Health disparities and outcomes (21 obras) · Environmental health (15 obras) · Biology (14 obras)