Ashton Verdery
Harry and Elissa Sichi Early Career Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Social Data Analytics and Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography
As part of Ashton’s current work, he has been examining the scope of bereavement stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and around the world. In the United States, his research estimates that more than nine million close family members have been bereaved by COVID-19 deaths, including about one hundred thousand children and teens who lost a parent to the pandemic. Ashton led a project that was the first to document these "COVID orphans" as the press calls them and has substantially changed public policy around bereavement by leading to new Executive Orders, Senate Appropriations, and other policy shifts aimed at helping these and other American children and teens who lose parents.
“I conduct research that generates new knowledge about the scope of pressing social challenges—e.g., how societies with rapidly increasing numbers of older people and decreasing numbers of younger people are faring and how such changes affect individual lives in terms of health, wealth, and happiness—and that can (and sometimes does) directly inform policy efforts to combat or mitigate social problems like increasing loneliness, climate change, and substance use.”