Elyse Jennings
Population Studies Center Trainee, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan
Research Interests
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. My research focuses on family processes, including marriage, marital dissolution, and fertility behaviors. I study the ways in which people’s attitudes and experiences influence their motivation for these family behaviors. My research currently has a strong focus on the South Asian context of rural Nepal. In this context, I have worked on projects investigating the influence of mothers’ and fathers’ attitudes on sons’ marital behavior, and the influence of neighbors’ attitudes on women’s progression to third and higher parity births. I am also interested in survey methods used to study family processes, and have been working with US data to study the influence of frequent survey measurement on the sexual behavior of young women. My current research focuses on marital dissolution in rural Nepal—a setting in which divorce has historically been rare. I study the way that marital dissolution operates in this setting, and the factors that can lead marriages to dissolve. For example, I am working on a paper that investigates the influence of marital discord on dissolution, and whether wives’ and their husbands’ attitudes each have an independent influence on this marital outcome.
Related Publications/Presentations
Jennings, Elyse A. and Jennifer S. Barber. 2013. "The Influence of Neighbors’ Family Size Preference on Women’s Progression to Higher Parity Births". Studies in Family Planning PMCID: PMC3621985.
Jennings, Elyse A., William G. Axinn, and Dirgha J. Ghimire. 2012. "The Effect of Parents' Attitudes on Sons' Marriage Timing." American Sociological Review 77:923-945. PMCID: PMC3590910.
Williams, Nathalie E., Dirgha J. Ghimire, William G. Axinn, Elyse A. Jennings, Meeta S. Pradhan. 2012. “A Micro-Level Approach to Investigating Armed Conflict and Population Responses.” Demography. 49(4):1521-1546. PMCID: PMC3495997.
Jennings, Elyse A. “Marital Dissolution in Nepal: The Influence of Spouses’ Reports of Marital Conflict.” To be presented as a poster at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, San Francisco, CA, May 4, 2012.
Jennings, Elyse A. and Jennifer Barber. “The Influence of Individual and Neighbor Attitudes on Progression to Higher Parity Birth.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington, DC, April 1, 2011 and at the Annual Symposium of the University of Michigan Partnerships for International Research and Education, Ann Arbor, August 9, 2011.. Also Research Report 11-738, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan.
