RWJF Health & Society Scholar:
Area(s) of Expertise:
U.S. Adult Mortality, Life Course
Ryan K. Masters received his PhD in sociology with a specialization in demography from The University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Ryan’s research looks at trends in educational and racial disparities in U.S. adult mortality risk. Central to his work is the intersection of life course and cohort processes of health and mortality. Ryan is particularly interested in examining how improvements in early-life conditions across the twentieth century have reshaped the education-mortality relationship in adulthood. His work has utilized recent advances in age-period-cohort methodology, and draws heavily from sociological and cohort perspectives of social change. As a Health & Society Scholar, Ryan continued to investigate how life course processes of health and mortality are changing across U.S. cohorts, and the implications these changes have on racial and socioeconomic disparities in health, morbidity, and mortality.