Byron Egeland and Alan Sroufe, professors in the Institute of Child Development (ICD), have built much of their careers around research in a far-reaching and internationally known longitudinal study called the Parent-Child Project, a 31-year effort devoted to examining poverty as a risk factor in the development and growth of children and young adults. Egeland and Amos Deinard, a professor in the University’s Department of Pediatrics, began the project in 1975 by recruiting 267 young mothers-to-be. Sroufe joined the study in 1978.

Egeland and Sroufe have been interested in determining the long-term effects of poverty, early (often single) parenthood, and unstable living situations on the development of children. As the children in the study grew older, professor Andrew Collins, who is interested in adolescent development, joined the study. They now are collecting data on the children of the children born in 1975.

In 2005, Sroufe, Egeland, Collins, and Elizabeth Carlson, a researcher in ICD, published The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood, using the Parent-Child Project research as their base. The book has been lauded internationally as a “monumental achievement.”

“The Parent-Child Project at the University of Minnesota is a landmark study in child development research,” says James Elicker, associate professor of child development and family studies at Purdue University.

 “These longitudinal data and the brilliant theoretical contributions of Alan Sroufe, Byron Egeland, Andy Collins, and their many collaborators over the years have taught us a great deal. The project continues to break new ground as one of the most influential studies of child development ever conducted.”