Merril Silverstein Ph.D.
Professor of Gerontology and Sociology.
Family and intergenerational relations

Dr. Silverstein, Professor of Gerontology and Sociology, received his B.A. from Queens College, and his M.S.W. in Social Work and Ph.D. in Soc iology from Columbia University. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Silverstein was Assistant Research Professor of Population Studies at Brown University, and from 1989 to 1992, a postdoctoral trainee in aging research at the Andrus Gerontology Center. Dr. Silverstein's research is concerned with understanding how individuals age within the context of family life, including such issues as social support across generations, later life migration, life-course patterns of intergenerational solidarity, and public policy toward caregiving families. He is a recipient of a FIRST Award from the National Institute of Aging to study grandparenting over the life-course, and a grant from the NIH Fogarty International Center to initiate a longitudinal study aging families in rural China. He is also Co-Principal Investigator, with Vern Bengtson, of the Longitudinal Study of Generations and Mental Health. Dr. Silverstein is a Fellow of the Brookdale Foundation, the Gerontological Society of America, and the Fulbright International Senior Scholars Program for his research on informal and formal support systems for the aged in Sweden. Most recently he received funding from the National Science Foundation to study how children of divorce benefit from support by grandparents. Dr. Silverstein teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the sociology of aging, family sociology, the demography of aging, and quantitative research methods in the social and gerontological sciences.

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