After writing a thesis entitled "Patterns of Contact between Older Unmarried Women and their Adult Children: A Multivariate Analysis" at Georgetown University, she graduated with an M.A.
She then wrote her dissertation on "The Effects of Demographic Change on Living Arrangements of the Elderly in Brazil: 1960-1980" at Duke University where she got her Ph.D. in sociology in 1993.
From 1995 to 2003, Agree was an assistant professor at the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and then served as its associate professor until 2012.
During her time at the Johns Hopkins University, Agree was also an interim director at the Johns Hopkins Population Center from 2005 to 2006 and served as director of its Center for Population Aging and Health from 2009 to 2012.
She also served as a visiting research fellow and scholar at the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom in 2002 and at Age Concern Institute of Gerontology of King's College London from 2002 to 2004 respectively.