Investigators of social differentials in health outcomes commonly augment incomplete micro data by appending socioeconomic characteristics of residential areas (such as median income in a zip code) to proxy for individual characteristics. However, little empirical attention has been paid to how...

Teen childbearing is commonly viewed as an irrational behavior that leads to long-term socioeconomic disadvantage for mothers and their children. Cross-sectional studies that estimate relationships between maternal age at first birth and socioeconomic indicators measured later in life form the...

Recent research has found, in some groups of Americans, dramatic increases in deaths due to drug overdose and suicide and an overall stagnation of trends toward increased longevity. This study examines the link between mortality of older working age (45 to 64) adults and local economic downturns...

While increased life expectancy in the U.S. has been used as justification for raising the Social Security retirement ages, independent researchers have reported that life expectancy declined in recent decades for white women with less than a high school education. However, there has been a...

Determining whether population dynamics provide competing explanations to place effects for observed geographic patterns of population health is critical for understanding health inequality. We focus on the working-age population where health disparities are greatest and analyze detailed data on...

Among the author's findings are that poor local populations pay a heavy toll in the loss of potentially productive members in their prime of life. However, important differences exist among and within persistently impoverished populations by race, gender, geographic location, and time period in...

Determining whether population dynamics provide competing explanations to place effects for observed geographic patterns of population health is critical for understanding health inequality. We focus on the working-age population where health disparities are greatest and analyze detailed data on...

Background: Infant mortality rates in the US exceed those in all other developed countries and in many less developed countries, suggesting political factors may contribute. Methods: Annual time series on overall, white and black infant mortality rates in the US were analyzed over the 1965-2010...

To assess whether the cumulative impact of exposure to repeated or chronic stressors, as measured by allostatic load, contributes to the "unhealthy assimilation" effects often observed for immigrants with time in the United States. Copyright (c) 2009 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.