The way in which economic development transforms the material basis of human social interaction and the widespread belief that the advanced industrial countries suffer from some kind of "social malaise" make it increasingly important to develop good indicators of the hitherto unmeasurable...

In this paper, we present evidence which suggests that key processes of social status differentiation, affecting health and numerous other social outcomes, take place at the societal level. Understanding them seems likely to involve analyses and comparisons of whole societies. Using income...

Studies have suggested that members of ethnic minority groups might be healthier when they live in areas with a high concentration of people from their own ethnic group - in spite of higher levels of material deprivation typically found within such areas. We investigated the effects of...

This study shows that living in a better area reduces the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes but, among African-American women, living in an area in which they are in a racial minority may increase the risk. Using the 1991 cohort of single infants born to African-American women in Chicago, we...