People

Research Interests:

Sarah Burgard conducts research on the social stratification of aging and health with population-based survey data, and has published extensively on the social factors underlying health disparities by socioeconomic status, gender, and race/ethnicity across the life course. Some of her recent research and funding has centered on understanding these questions in the context of economic recessions, which disrupt career, economic, and health paths for many adults, but especially for socioeconomically-marginalized groups. Dr. Burgard is PI of the 2020 Americans’ Changing Lives Study ACLLIFE wave, which collected full retrospective life histories including extensive information about life events from a cohort now in their late 50s, and a PI of the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study, a panel survey of adults in Southeast Michigan that has been tracking the life events and mental health of these individuals in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Using these data, she has published on the influences of job loss, financial shocks, debt, housing instability, and material hardship, with a focus on creating life course measures of cumulative disadvantage for which retrospective or prospective life history data are essential.