After completing her Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, Crimmins held positions in population sciences and sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1982, she joined the faculty at U.S.C., being promoted to full professor in 1992 and being named director of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health in 1999. Among many committees and journal boards, she served on the National Academy of Sciences's Panel on Race/Ethnic Health Differentials and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology.

Crimmins' 1985 book, The Fertility Revolution: A Supply-Demand Analysis, written with University of Southern California economist Richard Easterlin, was the subject of at least five major reviews, and called "well written" and having "important implications for public policymakers--and their advisers--in the developing countries." Their book was an attempt to find "empirical research to test" the "supply-demand theory of fertility determination." Their work provided the models used in further research (see, for instance, Shireen J. Jejeebhoy, "Women's Status and Fertility," Studies in Family Planning, 22.4 (Jul 1991), pp. 217-230).

Crimmins was one of several editors who published Determining Health Expectancies, (2003 ISBN 978-0470843970) which addressed "the important question of whether or not we are exchanging longer life for poorer health." The book was based on the research of REVES (Network on Health Expectancy). Most recently, she has co-edited two volumes on aging, Longer Life and Healthy Aging and Human Longevity, Individual Life Duration, and the Growth of the Oldest-old Population (both published by Springer in 2006).

Recent journal articles

• "Changing Mortality and Morbidity Rates and the Health Status and Life Expectancy of the Older Population ", Demography, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 159-175
• in healthy life expectancy in the United States, 1970-1990: gender, racial, and educational differences", Social Science and Medicine, Volume 52, Number 11, June 2001, pp. 1629-1641(13)
• "Interaction and Living Arrangements of Older Parents and their Children", Research on Aging, Vol. 12, No. 1, 3-35 (1990)
• "Getting Better and Getting Worse", Journal of Aging and Health, Vol. 5, No. 1, 3-36 (1993)
• "Inflammatory Exposure and Historical Changes in Human Life-Spans", Science 17 September 2004, pp. 1736 - 1739
• "Private Materialism, Personal Self-Fulfillment, Family Life, and Public Interest: The Nature, Effects, and Causes of Recent Changes in the Values of American Youth ", Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 499-533
• "Echoes of the Baby Boom and Bust: Recent and Prospective Changes in Living Alone among Elderly Widows in the United States" Demography, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 17-28
• The Relationship Between Cognitive and Physical Performance: MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging, The Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 57:M228-M235
• "Social Environment Effects on Health and Aging". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 954:88-117 (2001)