A life course view on depression: Social determinants of depressive symptom trajectories over 25 Years of Americans' Changing Lives.

Objectives: This study investigates heterogeneity in trajectories of depressive symptomatology in a national sample of American adults followed over 25 years. Using an innovative combination of data and methods, we sought to illuminate how depressive symptoms change over adulthood in terms of their levels and severity across 25 years, and how the social determinants of health influence differences in those trajectory paths.

Methods: Data come from the Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) study, a national sample of 3617 adults (age 25+) followed over 25 years (1986-2011).

Who looks on the bright side? Optimistic and pessimistic perceptual-response reflexes over American adulthood.

Research suggests that the way individuals are oriented towards the future is deeply embedded in their psychology, shaping how they perceive and react to opportunities and threats, even at unconscious levels. We argue that exposures to opportunities and threats over the life course can shape future orientation at a deep level, and that word-valence effects to survey questions indicate optimistic and pessimistic "perceptual-response reflexes" that are manifestations of unconscious dispositions. Using data collected over 25 years in the Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) study we analyze variation in word-valence effects by age, birth cohort, gender, and race.

Marriage: Cause or Mere Indicator of Future Earnings Growth?

The hypothesis that marriage increases men's earnings has contributed to legislative support for the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI). However, previous studies of this phenomenon have not controlled for many relevant characteristics that select men into marriage, nor have they focused on low-income, unmarried fathers-the population targeted by HMI. We use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which measures many previously unobserved confounders, to test for a relationship between marriage and earnings.

Unwed fathers' ability to pay child support: new estimates accounting for multiple-partner fertility.

We present new estimates of unwed fathers' ability to pay child support. Prior research relied on surveys that drastically undercounted nonresident unwed fathers and provided no link to their children who lived in separate households. To overcome these limitations, previous research assumed assortative mating and that each mother partnered with one father who was actually eligible to pay support and had no other child support obligations.