Handbook of Theories of Aging, Second Edition

Merril Silverstein, PhD is a professor in the Davis School of Gerontology and the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California. He holds a doctorate degree in sociology from Columbia University. He was previously research assistant professor at Brown University and before that an NIA post-doctoral scholar in aging research at USC. He has authored over 100 published works, including two edited volumes: Intergenerational Relations Across Time and Place (Springer Publishing) and From Generation to Generation: Continuity and Discontinuity in Aging Families (Johns Hopkins University Press). He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the Brookdale National Fellowship Program, and the Fulbright International Senior Scholars Program.

Vern L. Bengston, PhD, is AARP/University Chair in Gerontology and Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. He received his BA in 1959 at North Park College and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1963. He directs the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which he began at U.S.C. in 1970, and continues to be involved in research on the sociology of the life course, socialization, ethnicity, and aging. His publications include The Social Psychology of Aging (1973), Youth, Generations, and Social Change (with Robert Laufer, 1974), Grandparenthood (with Joan Robertson, 1985), The Measurement of Intergenerational Relations (with David Mangen and Pierre Landry, 1987) as well as two volumes recently published by Springer Publishing Company: Intergenerational Linkages: Hidden Connections in American Society (edited with Robert Harootyan, 1994) and Adult Intergenerational Relations: Effects of Societal Change (edited with Linda M. Burton and K. Warner Schaie). He has published over 170 papers in professional journals and books on aging, the life course, and families. He has been a member of review panels for the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Aging; he has twice won the Reuben Hill Award for outstanding research on theory on the family, presented by the National Council on Family Relations; and most recently he has been honored by the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Aging.

Norella M. Putney, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California, and currently serves as project director of the Transmission of Religion Across Generations study, an investigation of families and religion using data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations. The study is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and administered through the University's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She has published on such topics as theories of aging, intergenerational relations, aging and the life course, religion and families, and women's changing lives. She has coauthored chapters in The Futures of Old Age, the Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing, the Handbook of the Life Course, Frontiers in Socialization: Advances in Life Course Research, and the Handbook of Midlife Development. Her articles have appeared in The Journal of Societal and Social Policy, The American Sociologist, and the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. She also served as PI of a transdisciplinary drug abuse prevention research study at the University's Keck School of Medicine, investigating family dynamics in drug and alcohol use and abuse.

Daphna Gans, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow in the study of aging at the Department of Labor and Population at RAND, and a recipient of the National Institute on Aging Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award of Postdoctoral Training. She is a part-time lecturer at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. Daphna earned her doctoral degree in Gerontology from the University of Southern California and holds a Masters degree in Family Studies from Michigan State University. She co-authored articles that were published in several professional journals including Journal of Marriage and Family and Journal of Family Issues. During her studies at the University of Southern California, she served as data coordinator for a four-year bi-national study on intergenerational support to the aged in Israel and the United States.