Hui Liu

Michigan State University | MSU · Department of Sociology

Using a life course approach, we examined how sexuality is related to cognitive function for partnered older adults. We utilized longitudinal data from two rounds of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) to analyze 1,683 respondents. Cognitive function was measured using a continuous Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score....

Background and objectives: We work from a gendered life course perspective to examine the relationship between cognitive impairment and feelings of sexual obligation among U.S. older adults. Research design and methods: Data are drawn from two rounds of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) (2010/11 and 2015/16). The analyt...

Working from a life course perspective, we examined how acquiescence (i.e., “lack of resistance”) to an unwanted (i.e., “without experiencing a concomitant desire”) first sexual experience was related to health and well-being in late life. Data were drawn from the second wave of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (2010/11). The sam...

Purpose We examine widowhood effects on mortality across gender and race-ethnicity, with attention to variation in the mediating role of economic resources. Methods Data were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (1992-2016). The analytic sample included 34,777 respondents aged 51 and older who contributed 208,470 person-period records. Discr...

As a follow-up to our 2016 study, this article presents new findings examining the relationship between same-sex family structure and child health using the 2008–2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). After discussing NIHS data problems, we examine the relationship between family structure and a broad range of child well-being outcomes, incl...

Family relationships are enduring and consequential for well-being across the life course. We discuss several types of family relationships—marital, intergenerational, and sibling ties—that have an important influence on well-being. We highlight the quality of family relationships as well as diversity of family relationships in explaining their imp...

Objectives: We examined whether sexual minorities have greater risk of activity limitations than straight population, and whether the association between activity limitations and sexual minority status differs by gender and union status before and after controlling for key health variables of body mass index (BMI) and psychological distress . Metho...

Previous research has indicated that parents impact minor children's health behaviors and adult children's self-rated health and psychological well-being. However, little is known about the long-term consequences of the parent-child relationship for adult children's substance (i.e., smoking levels, low to moderate alcohol use) as adult children age...

There is a well-established relationship between union status and health within the general population, and growing evidence of an association between sexual identity and well-being. Yet, what is unknown is whether union status stratifies health outcomes across sexual identity categories. In order to elucidate this question, we analyzed nationally...

Working from a social relationship and life course perspective, we provide generalizable population-based evidence on partnered sexuality linked to cardiovascular risk in later life using national longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) (N = 2,204). We consider characteristics of partnered sexuality of olde...

The children of different-sex married couples appear to be advantaged on a range of outcomes relative to the children of different-sex cohabiting couples. Despite the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States, whether and how this general pattern extends to the children of same-sex married and cohabiting couples is unknown. This study...

We work from a minority stress perspective to theorize health disparities across union status at the intersection of sexual minority status, race-ethnicity, and gender. We use pooled data from the Integrated National Health Interview Surveys (1997–2014) to assess a wide range of health outcomes, including self-rated physical health, psychological d...

Objectives: Prior U.S. population studies have found that childhood adversity influences the quality of relationships in adulthood, with emerging research suggesting that this association might be especially strong for black men. We theorize psychosocial and behavioral coping responses to early life adversity and how these responses may link early...

Cigarette smoking has long been a target of public health intervention because it substantially contributes to morbidity and mortality. Individuals in different-sex marriages have lower smoking risk (i.e., prevalence and frequency) than different-sex cohabiters. However, little is known about the smoking risk of individuals in same-sex cohabiting u...

The present study advances research on union status and health by providing a first look at alcohol use differentials among different-sex and same-sex married and cohabiting individuals using nationally representative population-based data (National Health Interview Surveys 1997–2011, N = 181,581). The results showed that both same-sex and differen...

We use a life course approach to guide an investigation of relationships and health at the nexus of race and gender. We consider childhood as a sensitive period in the life course, during which significant adversity may launch chains of disadvantage in relationships throughout the life course that then have cumulative effects on health over time. D...

A legacy of research finds that marriage is associated with good health. Yet same-sex cohabitors cannot marry in most states in the United States and therefore may not receive the health benefits associated with marriage. We use pooled data from the 1997 to 2009 National Health Interview Surveys to compare the self-rated health of same-sex cohabiti...

This study is the first to explore the relationship between cohabitation and U.S. adult mortality using a nationally representative sample. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey‐Longitudinal Mortality Follow‐up files 1997–2004 (N = 193,851), the authors found that divorced, widowed, and never‐married White men had higher mortality ra...

A life course perspective is used to explore the effects of divorce and widowhood on self-rated health across age and birth cohorts. Growth curve analysis of a fifteen-year longitudinal survey--Americans' Changing Lives (ACL), conducted by the Institute for Social Research in the United States between 1986 and 2001 (House, 2002) suggests that altho...

Scholars call for greater attention to social contexts that promote and deter risk factors for health. Parenthood transforms social contexts in a myriad of ways that may influence long-term patterns of weight gain. Life course features of parenthood such as age at first birth, parity, and living with a minor child may further influence weight gain....

Although a growing number of American parents work non-standard schedules, evidence on the consequences of such working patterns is inconsistent and limited to married samples. This study highlights the importance of considering potential differences between cohabiting and married parents in terms of the relationship between non-standard work sched...

We work from a life-course perspective to explore how relationships with parents affect adult children's marital quality. We further ask whether the effects of parents on adult children's marital quality depend on the adult child's gender, age, marital duration, and childhood family experiences. Growth-curve analysis of national, longitudinal data...

We consider how marital status and marital transitions, important features of the social environment, influence weight change over time, and how these effects vary by age, race, and gender. Growth curve analysis of a four-wave national survey suggests that marital transitions are more important than marital status in predicting change in body weigh...

Recent work emphasizes a “natural alliance” of stress and life course perspectives with both childhood and adult stress exposure having consequences over the life course. Research in this tradition is primarily concerned with mental and physical health outcomes and views health behaviour as a possible mechanism linking stress to health. This chapte...

Although the meanings and rates of being married, divorced, separated, never-married, and widowed have changed significantly over the past several decades, we know very little about historical trends in the relationship between marital status and health. Our analysis of pooled data from the National Health Interview Survey from 1972 to 2003 shows t...

We have previously demonstrated that mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells differentiated on three-dimensional (3D), highly porous, tantalum-based scaffolds (Cytomatrixtrade mark) have significantly higher hematopoietic differentiation efficiency than those cultured under conventional two-dimensional (2D) tissue culture conditions. In addition, ES cell-s...

We work from a life course perspective and identify several reasons to expect age and gender differences in the link between marital quality and health. We present growth curve evidence from a national longitudinal survey to show that marital strain accelerates the typical decline in self-rated health that occurs over time and that this adverse eff...

Chromosomal aberrations of BCL11A at 2p16.1 have been reported in a variety of B-cell malignancies and its deficiency in mice leads to a profound block in B-cell development. Alternative pre-mRNA splicing of BCL11A produces multiple isoforms sharing a common N-terminus. The most abundant isoform we have identified in human lymphoid samples is BCL11...

We work from a stress and life course perspective to consider how stress affects trajectories of change in marital quality over time. Specifically, we ask whether stress is more likely to undermine the quality of marital experiences at different points in the life course. In addition, we ask whether the effects of adult stress on marital quality de...

Stem cell-based tissue engineering is a promising technology in the effort to create functional tissues of choice. To establish an efficient approach for generating hematopoietic cell lineages directly from embryonic stem (ES) cells and to study the effects of three-dimensional (3D) biomaterials on ES cell differentiation, we cultured mouse ES cell...