CCPR’s Prof. Judith Seltzer wins PAA’s Inaugural Sara McLanahan Award

CCPR’s Prof. Judith Seltzer wins Sara McLanahan Award in recognition of her extraordinary lifetime contributions to the study of family change, the well-being of children and families, and related social policies.

Professor Judith Seltzer’s remarkable body of research has studied contemporary shifts in kinship patterns in the U.S. (such as marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and non-married families), intergenerational obligations, relationships between nonresident fathers and children, and how policies affect family change. She has also contributed to improvements in the quality of survey data on families and family networks, including a module on kin networks and transfers in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, family content in the Add Health Parent Study, and most recently developing a coding scheme for the Health and Retirement Study questions on who respondents gave or received help from during the COVID-19 pandemic. Judy has also contributed enormously to the development of population research in the profession broadly and at UCLA. She has been an active member of the Population Association of America, including serving as president in 2016 and as a founding member of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR), which has shaped the scholarship and careers of multiple scholars. Judy’s students and colleagues have benefited enormously from her intellectual contributions and her tremendous generosity of spirit.