Jay Belsky (born July 7, 1952) is an American child psychologist and the Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn Professor of

Human Development Human development may refer to: * Development of the human body * Developmental psychology * Human development (economics) * Human Development Index, an index used to rank countries by level of human development * Human evolution, the prehistoric ...

at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

. He is noted for his research in the fields of

child development Child development involves the Human development (biology), biological, developmental psychology, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. Childhood is divided into 3 stages o ...

and family studies. He was a founding investigator of the

NICHD The ''Eunice Kennedy Shriver'' National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It supports and conducts research aime ...

Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, and of the National Evaluation of

Sure Start Sure Start is a UK Government area-based initiative, announced in 1998 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, applying primarily in England with slightly different versions in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The initiative o ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. He has been an

ISI Highly Cited Researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, ...

since 2002.

Career

After receiving his Ph.D. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1978, Belsky joined the faculty of

Penn State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became ...

, where he became a distinguished professor of human development before leaving the faculty there in 1999. From 1999 to 2010, he was a professor of psychology at

Birkbeck University of London , mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck. , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £4.3 m (2014) , budget = £10 ...

, where he was also the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues. He became the Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn Professor of Human Development at the University of California, Davis in 2011. Since 2010, he has been a member of the

Academy of Europe The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

Research

Belsky has published multiple studies reporting that

child care Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...

is associated with an increased risk of psychological and behavioral problems for children. These studies have been covered extensively by the media, though they have been criticized by other researchers. One such critic, Kathleen McCartney, former director of the Child Study and Development Center at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

and dean of the

Harvard Graduate School of Education The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is the education school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1920, it was the first school to grant the EdD degree and the first Harvard school ...

, said in 1987 that "None of the studies Jay elskytalks about look at the quality of child-care arrangements or the family backgrounds".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Belsky, Jay 1952 births Living people American developmental psychologists University of California, Davis faculty Scientists from New York City Cornell University alumni Child psychologists Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Pennsylvania State University faculty Members of Academia Europaea American child psychologists