Prospective demographic information of the United States is limited to national-level analyses and subnational analyses of the total population. With nearly 40% of the U.S. population being residents of coastal areas, understanding the anticipated demographic changes in coastal counties is important for long-range planning purposes. In this research note, we use long-range, county-level population projections based on a simplified cohort-component method to discuss demographic changes by age, sex, and race and ethnicity for coastal counties between 2020 and the end of the century, and we compare these changes to inland counties. Presently, coastal counties are statistically significantly different from inland counties by race and ethnicity (more diverse) and sex (more women) but not by age, yet by 2025, we expect coastal counties to become significantly older than inland counties. We note several important trajectories of predicted demographic outcomes in coastal counties across the remainder of the century: (1) the non-Hispanic White population is expected to decrease, both numerically and as a percentage of the population; (2) the population older than 65 is projected to increase, both numerically and as a percentage of the population; and (3) the ratio of women to men remains constant over the century at 1.03. These trends combine to suggest that the future U.S. coastline will likely be both increasingly diverse racially and ethnically and significantly older than it is today.

When scholars express concern about trust in science, they often focus on whether the public trusts research findings. This study explores a different dimension of trust and examines whether and how frequently researchers misrepresent their research accomplishments when applying for a faculty position. We collected all of the vitae submitted for faculty positions at a large research university for 1 year and reviewed a 10% sample for accuracy. Of the 180 applicants whose vitae we analyzed, 141 (78%) claimed to have at least one publication, and 79 of these 141 (56%) listed at least one publication that was unverifiable or inaccurate in a self-promoting way. We discuss the nature and implications of our findings, and suggest best practices for both applicants and search committees in presenting and reviewing vitae.

Background and Objectives Social support is a vital psychological health resource for well-being in later life. However, research on the associations of social support has largely excluded sexual minorities. This study compares the association between sources of social support and depressive symptoms across groups of older heterosexual and sexual minority men and women. Sexual minority status herein is based on self-reported sexual histories of having same-sex and opposite-sex only experiences (SSE and OSO). Research Design and Methods Based on a pooled cross-sectional dataset drawn from three waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), we used OLS regression and moderation tests to evaluate how three sources of social support – partner, family, friend – are related to depressive symptoms for SSE and OSO men and women. Results Results show OSO men and women both had significant negative associations between depressive symptoms and social support regardless of the source. SSE women, in contrast, only have a significant association between high levels of friend support, and SSE men only show significant effects in relation to high levels of partner support. Discussion and Implications These results suggest the effects of social support on psychological health are significantly constrained/circumscribed for sexual minority men and women. Interventions designed to decrease symptoms of depression in older sexual minorities through social support are discussed.

Given that sexual minorities have been historically stigmatized within institutions of religion, they may be less likely to exhibit any health benefits from religious participation. In this article, we use data from Waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to test whether the effects of religious affiliation (becoming affiliated with a religious group) and disaffiliation (no longer affiliating with a religious group) on depressive symptoms are moderated by sexual minority status from adolescence to early adulthood. In regression models adjusted for selection effects, we observed that, compared to respondents who were consistently unaffiliated, becoming affiliated was associated with more depressive symptoms from baseline to follow-up among lesbian, gay, and bisexual respondents, but not among heterosexual respondents. We conclude with the implications of our results as they relate to understanding the health impacts of marginalized groups in social institutions and the importance of selection effects.