1. Frederick O. Lorenz is University Professor of Statistics and Sociology at Iowa State University. His research interests are in estimating multi-informant and longitudinal models of relationships and health.
2. K. A. S. Wickrama is Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State University. His research interests are in work and adolescent and adult physical and emotional health. He is currently conducting research on the effects of the recent tsunami on adolescents and mothers in villages in Sri Lanka.
3. Rand D. Conger is Professor of Human Development at the University of California, Davis, and the founding Director of the Iowa State University Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. He has published widely on stress and adolescent health outcomes, and he recently edited, with Frederick O. Lorenz and K. A. S. Wickrama, Continuity and Change in Family Relations: Theory, Methods, and Empirical Findings.
4. Glen H. Elder, Jr., is Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Research Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he codirects the Carolina Consortium on Human Development and manages a research program on life course studies. His book with Rand D. Conger, Children of the Land: Adversity and Success in Rural America, was based on the panel of families used in the present article.