Research

Dr. Lichter is Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University, and also is a faculty member in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management.  He is chair-elect of the family section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He is past chair of Sociology of Population section in ASA, and has served as editor of Demography and President of the Association of Population Centers.

Dr. Lichter has published widely on demographic topics related to the family and welfare policy, including studies of children's changing living arrangements and poverty, cohabitation and marriage among unwed mothers, and welfare incentive effects on the family.  He has been interested in patterns of marriage or dissolution among cohabiting women and in the rise in serial cohabitation (i.e., the cycling from relationship to relationship as an adaptation to economic hardship).  His recent papers have examined the implications of state marriage promotion policies, i.e., questions about whether low-income women face significant barriers to healthy marriages, whether they form marriages that last, and whether they marry men who can provide a route from poverty. His other research has focused on recent demographic trends among America’s new immigrant populations. For example, he has studied patterns of intermarriage between immigrants and native-born Americans.  Intermarriage with the native white population is often used a measure of social distance between groups, and as an indirect indicator of social and economic incorporation.  In addition, he has examined the new residential destinations of recent immigrants, including the geographic movement of Hispanics into less densely-settled rural areas. His recently published paper in Demography provides the first national estimates of residential segregation in small towns, and addresses questions of economic incorporation of racial minorities and new immigrants into their communities.

Publications

Sassler, S., Cunningham, A., and Lichter, D.T. (2008). “Intergenerational Patterns of Union Formation and Marital Quality.” Journal of Family Issues 29, forthcoming

Lichter, D.T., and Graefe, D.R. (2007). "Men and Marriage Promotion: Who Marries Unwed Mothers?" Social Service Review 81(September).

Lichter, D.T., Parisi, D., Grice, S.M., and Taquino, M.  (2007). “National Estimates of Racial Segregation in Rural and Small Town America.” Demography 44: 563-581

Lichter, D.T., and Johnson, K.M. (2007). "The Changing Spatial Concentration of America's Rural Poor Population." Rural Sociology 72:331-358.

Lichter, D.T., Brown, J.B., Qian, Z-C., and Carmalt J. (2007). "Marital Assimilation Among Hispanics: Evidence of Declining Cultural and Economic Assimilation?" Social Science Quarterly 88:745-765.

Qian, Z-C, and Lichter, D.T. (2007). "Social Boundary and Marital Assimilation: Evaluating Trends in Racial and Ethnic Intermarriage." American Sociological Review 72:68-94.

Graefe, D.R., and Lichter, D.T. (2007). "When Unwed Mothers Marry: The Marital and Cohabiting Partners of Mid-Life Women." Journal of Family Issues 28:595-622.

Lichter, D.T., Parisi, D., Grice, S.M., and Taquino, M.  (2007).  "Municipal Underbounding:  Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns."  Rural Sociology, 72:47-68.

Lichter, D.T., and Johnson, K. (2006). "Emerging Rural Settlement Patterns and the Geographic Redistribution of Americas New Immigrants." Rural Sociology, 71(1):109-131.

Lichter, D.T., Qian, Z-C, and Mellott, L. (2006), "Marriage or Dissolution? Transitions to Marriage among Poor Cohabiting Women". Demography 43(2): 223-240.