Dr. Lin earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri in 2025 as Coleman-Ganong Endowed Professor in Family Structure and Family Process, she held the position of Professor of Research Excellence at Bowling Green State University. As a family scholar, Dr. Lin investigates parent-child relationships across the life course. With support from federal and non-federal funding sources, she has published extensively on union formation and dissolution, intergenerational transfers, and late-life caregiving. A hallmark of her scholarship is identifying and addressing conceptual and measurement gaps in the study of family structure and processes, using rigorous analytic methods and a wide array of large-scale survey data. Her current research focuses on the antecedents and consequences of divorce after age 50, family caregiving in late life, and discordance in parents’ and children’s reports of intergenerational transfers.

Affiliations

• Gerontological Society of America
• Population Association of America

Areas of Expertise

• Aging and the Life Course
• Disability and Caregiving
• Family Structure and Well-being
• Kinship and Intergenerational Relationships
• Statistics and Research Methods
• Union Formation and Dissolution