October Lunch&Learn: Unexpected Changes in Rural Families: Fewer Married Parents, Lower Child Poverty

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Dr. Matthew M. Brooks, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University, will lead our upcoming Lunch & Learn session with an engaging discussion on shifting family dynamics in rural communities. His research examines how transformations in marriage, parenthood, and household structures intersect with broader social and economic change, particularly in rural North America. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the unexpected ways rural families are evolving, the implications of these shifts for child well-being and poverty, and how they challenge long-standing assumptions about rural life and policy.

Itinerary

12:00pm - 12:05pm | Welcome and introductions

12:05pm - 12:45pm | Lunch&Learn presentation

12:45pm - 12:55pm | Moderated Q&A session

12:55pm - 13:00pm | Closing and upcoming sessions

Location

This is an online webinar hosted on Zoom. To receive details to enter the event, please register.

Featured Speaker

Matthew M. Brooks 

Assistant Professor, Sociology of Population, Florida State University

Matthew M. Brooks is the Charles B. Nam Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Population at Florida State University. Dr. Brooks serves as the Assistant Director of FSU’s Center for Demography and Population Health. His area of expertise relates to the social and family demography of the rural United States, and his research strives to understand the causes and consequences of population change on rural-urban disparities in poverty, health, and well-being.  Recent projects of Dr. Brooks’ have examined the uneven impacts of Medicaid expansion on mortality between rural and urban areas, the rise of cohabitation and nonmarital childbirth among rural women, and growing racial diversity in the United States.

Suggested Readings

• Lichter, D. T., & Brown, D. L. (2011). Rural America in an urban society: Changing spatial and social boundaries. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 565–592. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150208 
• Clark, S., Brooks, M. M., Helou, A.-M., & Margolis, R. (2024). Are rural areas holdouts in the second demographic transition? Evidence from Canada and the United States. Demography, 61(2), 541–568. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-11237867
• (2019, December 26). Opioids and kinship in Ohio. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/us/opioids-kinship-ohio.htmlLinks to an external site.

What are Lunch&Learn's?

The CAnD3 Lunch&Learn series is designed to introduce our Fellows, team members, and partners to emerging research on topics related to population dynamics and population aging. These modules will cover the  Four CAnD3 Population Aging Axes: (1) family and social inclusion; (2) education, labour and inequality; (3) migration and ethnicity; and (4) wellbeing and autonomy.

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