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Hui Liu

Hui Liu

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Hui Liu is an expert in the relationship between health and relationships, including marriage, divorce, and ethnic minorities.

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Area of Expertise

Aging Marriage Health Family Medicine Divorce

Biography

Hui Liu's current research interests include population health and mortality, family and marriage, bio-demography of aging and the life course, LGBT population, sexuality, and quantitative methodology. Specifically, Liu has focused on using innovative quantitative methods to develop, test, and promote scientific understanding of marriage and family processes related to population health and well-being. Her interests in marriage also extend to other “marriage-like” intimate relationships such as same-sex ... cohabitation and sexual relationships, and how they are linked to population health and well-being. Liu’s research has been published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Journal of Marriage and Family, Demography, Social Science and Medicine, Social Science Research, Population Research and Policy Review, and Structural Equation Modeling. Liu received an NIH Career Award (Mentored Research Scientist Development Award) to investigate the biological links between marriage and health using interdisciplinary approaches. Her other current work includes an NIH-funded project that examines child health disparities of same-sex families at the population level. She was the 2013 winner of the Outstanding Professional Paper Award from the National Council on Family Relations. She was also a Butler-Williams Scholar of 2014 supported by the National Institute on Aging. The relevance and timeliness of Liu’s research is reflected in the media attention it has received. Her research has been widely reported in prominent national and international news outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, US News and World Report, TIME, ABC News, CBS News, Los Angeles Times, Daily Mail, Sydney Morning Herald, The Times of India, China Daily and Iran Daily.

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Education

The University of Texas at Austin: Ph.D., Sociology and Demography | 2008

Nankai University: B.A., Economics | 1999

The University of Texas at Austin: M.S., Statistics | 2007

Nankai University: M.A., Economics | 2002

Selected Press

Disparities are worse for LGB millennials than boomers

Futurity | 2021-06-22

Mental and physical health disparities are worse among younger generations of queer Americans, according to a new study comparing lesbian, gay, and bisexual millennials and their older peers to those of their straight counterparts. In the first-ever population-based national study comparing mental and physical health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Americans to their straight counterparts, Michigan State University sociologist Hui Liu and research partner Rin Reczek, professor of sociology from Ohio State University, find that when compared to their straight counterparts, LGB millennials have worse health disadvantages than their older peers, though disparities persist throughout older generations as well.

Marriage Could Offer More Protections to Transgender Couples

Brides | 2017-09-08

Because of depressing statistics like these, it’s so important for researchers to continue their work in shedding light on what marginalized communities have to deal with. That’s part of the reason why Hui Liu, a professor of sociology at Michigan State University, started investigating how marital status impacts transgender individuals. Her findings were published in the Journal of Marriage and Family earlier this summer...

Is sex in later life good for your health? It depends

WTOP | 2016-09-06

“Strikingly, we find that having sex once a week or more puts older men at a risk for experiencing cardiovascular events that is almost two times greater than older men who are sexually inactive,” said Michigan State professor Hui Liu, a co-author of the study...