Irma Elo received PhD in Demography and Public Affairs from Princeton University in 1990. She is a Professor of Sociology and Demography and Director of the Population Aging Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has also served as the Chair of the Graduate Group in Demography and Director of the PSC.
Her research, funded by the NICHD and NIA, focuses on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in health, including cross-national comparisons, early life influences on later life health, familial concentration in longevity, health of immigrants, and racial and neighborhood health disparities.
She has ongoing research collaborations with colleagues at the Regional Institute of Population Studies, Ghana; University of Helsinki, Finland; and the Institut National d'études Démographiques (INED), France. She first joined IUSSP in 1999 and was a session organizer for the 2013 IUSSP International Population Conference.
Mehta, N.K., I.T. Elo, M. Engelman, D.S. Lauderdale, and B.M. Kestenbaum. 2016. "Life Expectancy
among U.S.-Born and Foreign-Born Older Adults in the United States: Estimates from Linked Social
Security and Medicare Data." Demography 53(4):1109-1134. PMCID: PMC5026916. http://dx.doi.or
Elo, I.T., E. Frankenberg, R. Gansey, and D. Thomas. 2015. "Africans in the American Labor Market." Demography 52(5):1513-1542. PMCID: PMC4607652. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0417-y.
Elo, I.T., H. Beltrán-Sánchez, and J. Macinko. 2014. "The Contribution of Health Care and Other
Interventions to Black-White Disparities in Life Expectancy, 1980-2007." Population Research
and Policy Review 33(1):97-126. PMCID: PMC3925638. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007 /s11113-013-9309-2
Elo, I.T., P. Martikainen, and M. Myrskylä. 2014. "Socioeconomic Status across the Life Course and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Finland." Social Science and Medicine 119:198-206. PMCID: PMC4037396. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.037.
Elo, I.T., Z.M. Vang, and J.F. Culhane. 2014. "Variation in Birth Outcomes by Mother’s Country of Birth among Non-Hispanic Black Women in the United States." Maternal and Child Health Journal 18(10):2371-2381. PMCID: PMC4207849. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10995-014-1477-0.
Member, U.S. Census Bureau Scientific Advisory Committee,
Chair, Committee on Population Statistics, Population Association of America
Member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee, Swedish Initiative for Research on Microdata in the Social and Medical Sciences (SIMSAM).
Past chair, Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center for Health Statistics.
Past chair, Population Section, American Sociological Association
Past member, Board of Directors, Population Association of America
Site Principal Investigator, Long Life Family Study, National Institute of Aging
Co-Investigator, Eliciting Maternal Knowledge about Technology of Skill Formation, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, (PI: F. Cunha)
Co-Investigator. The Contribution of Obesity to International Differences in Longevity, National Institute of Aging, (PI: S.H. Preston)
Co-Investigator. Mobility, Selectivity, and the Migrant Mortality Advantage, Eunice Kennedy Shriver
National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, (PI: M. Guillot)