Prenatal Exposure to an Acute Stressor and Children’s Cognitive Outcomes

Exposure to environmental stressors is highly prevalent and unequally distributed along socioeconomic lines and may have enduring negative consequences, even when experienced before birth. Yet, estimating the consequences of prenatal stress on children’s outcomes is complicated by the issue of confounding (i.e., unobserved factors correlated with stress exposure and with children’s outcomes). I combine a natural experiment—a strong earthquake in Chile—with a panel survey to capture the effect of prenatal exposure on acute stress and children’s cognitive ability. I find that stress exposure in early pregnancy has no effect on children’s cognition among middle-class families, but it has a strong negative influence among disadvantaged families. I then examine possible pathways accounting for the socioeconomic stratification in the effect of stress, including differential exposure across socioeconomic status, differential sensitivity, and parental responses. Findings suggest that the interaction between prenatal exposures and socioeconomic advantage provides a powerful mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.     

Early-Life Circumstances and Their Effects Over the Life Course

Population Research and Policy Review - The idea that early-life circumstances shape people’s health, development, and well-being over the life course has gained renewed centrality in the...     

The Simultaneous Effects of Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Child Health on Children’s Cognitive Development

Family socioeconomic status (SES) and child health are so strongly related that scholars have speculated child health to be an important pathway through which a cycle of poverty is reproduced across generations. Despite increasing recognition that SES and health work reciprocally and dynamically over the life course to produce inequality, research has yet to address how these two pathways simultaneously shape children’s development. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and marginal structural models, we ask three questions: (1) how does the reciprocal relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and child health affect estimates of each circumstance on children’s cognitive development?; (2) how do their respective effects vary with age?; and (3) do family SES and child health have differential effects on cognitive development across population subgroups? The results show that the negative effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health are insensitive to their reciprocal relationships over time. We find divergent effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health on children’s cognitive trajectories, with a widening pattern for family SES effects and a leveling-off pattern for child health effects. Finally, the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage are similar across all racial/ethnic groups, while the effects of child health are largely driven by white children. We discuss theoretical and policy implications of these findings for future research.     

Long-term effect of in utero conditions on maternal survival later in life: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African countries have some of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality. Most research on maternal mortality focuses on factors during pregnancy and delivery. However, consistent with the fetal programming hypothesis, a woman’s maternal survival may also be related to conditions she experienced while in utero. I examine this hypothesis in 14 African countries by relating rainfall when a woman was in utero with her maternal survival later in her life. High levels of rainfall, representing better in utero conditions, decrease the probability of maternal death by 1.1 percentage points, a 58 % decrease from a mean of 1.9 %. Higher rainfall while in utero reduces the probability of anemia during pregnancy, a risk factor for postpartum hemorrhage. Another plausible pathway is through a reduction in body mass index, a predictor of pregnancy-induced hypertension. Improving conditions for pregnant women will have inter-generational effects, benefiting pregnant women today and improving their daughters’ maternal survival.     

A Multidimensional Dynamic Measure of Child Disadvantage: A Methodological Tool for Policymakers

This paper demonstrates the applicability of an innovative approach towards examining child disadvantage, using a holistic, dynamic measure that not only accounts for multiple sources of disadvantage but also for the recurrence and persistence of disadvantage throughout a child’s life. We analyse child disadvantage using two longitudinal surveys of the Australian child population, one of which is specific to Indigenous children, who experience notably higher rates of disadvantage. Among Australian children, we detect that poor body weight and bullying—representative of the broad dimensions of health and emotional wellbeing—should be of significant concern to policymakers. Among Indigenous children, housing conditions, schooling and exposure to risky behaviours stand out as areas of concern. By identifying the dimensions in which rates of child disadvantage are most severe, this methodological approach can help steer targeted policy actions.     

Cognitive Disparities: The Impact of the Great Depression and Cumulative Inequality on Later-Life Cognitive Function

Population aging has driven a spate of recent research on later-life cognitive function. Greater longevity increases the lifetime risk of memory diseases that compromise the cognitive abilities vital to well-being. Alzheimer’s disease, thought to be the most common underlying pathology for elders’ cognitive dysfunction (Willis and Hakim 2013), is already the sixth leading cause of death in the United States (Alzheimer’s Association 2016). Understanding social determinants of pathological cognitive decline is key to crafting interventions, but evidence is inconclusive for how social factors interact over the life course to affect cognitive function. I study whether early-life exposure to the Great Depression is directly associated with later-life cognitive function, influences risky behaviors over the life course, and/or accumulates with other life-course disadvantages. Using growth curve models to analyze the Health and Retirement Study, I find that early-life exposure to the Great Depression is associated with fluid cognition, controlling for intervening factors—evidence for a critical period model. I find little support for a social trajectory model. Disadvantage accumulates over the life course to predict worse cognitive function, providing strong evidence for a cumulative inequality model.     

Exploring New Life Course Patterns of Mother’s Continuing Secondary and College Education

Population Research and Policy Review - A mounting body of evidence suggests that the life course sequence that once defined contemporary US women’s lives is changing as an increasing number...     

Correlates of wellbeing among African American lesbians

Although there is a growing body of knowledge about health among African American women in general, there is a dearth of information on African American lesbians. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the correlates of health-related quality of life among African American lesbians using a cross-sectional anonymous survey with topics and measures developed by members of the African American lesbian community. Surveys were completed by 123 English speaking adult women who identified as African American lesbians and were attending the Zuna Institute's National Black Lesbian Conference. Overall, we found a very high health-related quality of life, in spite of a high frequency of health impairments. The average body mass index (BMI) for this sample was 32.2 (SD?=?8.0); 13% were morbidly obese, having a BMI of 40 or more and only 15% of the women were in a healthy weight range; advancing age was associated with poorer physical functioning, decreased physical role functioning, and more pain. Health-related quality of life was associated with depression and spirituality, but not religion. This study highlights the need for subjective measures of health-related quality of life as well as checklists of diseases and disorders.     

Mobility and the City Improvement District: Frictions in the Human-capital Mobile Assemblage

In this paper, we interrogate the role of the city improvement district (CID) in the intervention and management of mobility within the context of the South African city and the case study of the Groote Schuur Community Improvement District (GSCID), a public–private urban governance scheme situated in Cape Town’s middle income southern suburbs. Using the theoretical lens of bodily-scale mobility, we investigate the CID’s activation and management. This is useful, as we will demonstrate, because it is through the mobility and immobility at the scale of the body, where the CID’s mandate is operationalised and it is through the control of mobility that the CID’s mission, discourses and activities are linked. This work demonstrates that CIDs, as elite-driven urban renewal initiatives closely aligned with capital interests, employ exclusionary spatial practices that have the potential to shape the twenty-first century urban experience in significant ways. We conclude by theorising the co-constitutive nature of human mobilities and capital as the ‘human-capital mobile assemblage’ and by arguing that the CID occupies an ambivalent place in the contemporary city.     

Whatever Happened to Social Indicators in Africa? Whatever Happened Indeed! A Developing World Perspective on the Kenneth C. Land and Alex C. Michalos Report on ‘Fifty Years After the Social Indicators Movement’

Africa is a latecomer to the Social Indicators Movement. The first social indicators for Third World countries were developed by outsiders and covered almost exclusively topics related to basic needs and development. In response to Kenneth Land’s and Alex Michalos’ historical assessment and their agenda for future ‘social indicators/quality of life/well-being’ research, the commentary traces how South Africa and sub-Saharan countries—with a little help from many friends who are pioneers in the movement—have succeeded in developing their own home-grown social indicators movement. Addressing some of the themes outlined in the agenda that Land and Michalos set for future research, the commentary discusses the importance of monitoring social change occurring in African society in a ‘post-industrialized and much more globalized, and digitized-computerized-roboticized’ era: How will new values and norms impact on the quality of life of future generations of African people?     

Towards the Development of Objective,Universal Criteria of Cultural Evaluation: The Challenges Posed by Anti-Foundationalism,Culturalism and Romanticism

Over the course of the last century, it has become increasingly unfashionable in the social sciences to make cross-cultural evaluations. The advance of cultural relativism has ensured that criticisms of other cultures are regarded as subjective and ethnocentric. There remain, however, cultural beliefs, practices and traditions which appear, prima facie, to contradict people’s interests. Are there any means of evaluating such practices or cultures according to objective, universal criteria? If there are, these need to withstand a series of challenges posed by ‘relativist’ critics of objectivity and universality. This article categorises these challenges, detailing anti-foundationalist belief in a conflation of perception and truth, culturalist belief in the overwhelming importance to wellbeing of living according to one’s group’s traditions, and a romantic challenge, which invokes anti-universalism only instrumentally, to particular aspects of Western culture. In order to overcome these challenges, a theory of cultural evaluation must demonstrate the existence of certain goods which are intrinsic to human beings, can be affected by cultural activity and are of greater importance than the culturalist good of living according to one’s group’s traditions. I put forward three plausible conceptual candidates—needs, capabilities and flourishing—discussing briefly the possible merits of each. Finally, I argue that, if we are to measure culture, rather than quality of life, we must consider the influence of circumstance on the nature of cultures and the level of wellbeing. This article is an attempt to identify the parameters for more detailed research into this contentious, but potentially valuable, field of study.     

Second-Generation Outcomes of the Great Migration

The mass migration of African Americans out of the South during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century represents one of the most significant internal migration flows in U.S. history. Those undertaking the Great Migration left the South in search of a better life, and their move transformed the cultural, social, and political dynamics of African American life specifically and U.S. society more generally. Recent research offers conflicting evidence regarding the migrants’ success in translating their geographic mobility into economic mobility. Due in part to the lack of a large body of longitudinal data, almost all studies of the Great Migration have focused on the migrants themselves, usually over short periods of their working lives. Using longitudinally linked census data, we take a broader view, investigating the long-term economic and social effects of the Great Migration on the migrants’ children. Our results reveal modest but statistically significant advantages in education, income, and poverty status for the African American children of the Great Migration relative to the children of southerners who remained in the South. In contrast, second-generation white migrants experienced few benefits from migrating relative to southern or northern stayers.     

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: Refinements and 2015 Rankings

Fifty years have elapsed since Cantril (1965) published his work on The Pattern of Human Concerns. His line of inquiry has stood the test of time. In late 2012, the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey replicated Cantril’s 1960s questions and methodology to elicit South Africans’ hopes and aspirations and worries and fears for self and country and their ratings of where self and country stood—past, present and will stand in future. Although Cantril’s ‘ladder-of life’ scale is still regularly used as a measure of subjective well-being, to our knowledge his full line of preliminary questioning has not been fielded again to date. Our study found that South African aspirations for self were mainly material ones for a decent standard of living and the means to achieve this goal. Hopes for the nation concentrated on economic and political progress to consolidate South Africa’s democracy. A large number of personal and national hopes were mirrored in fears that these aspirations might not be met. Cantril’s method also allowed us to review the main concerns and ratings across the diverse groups of citizens that make up the ‘rainbow nation’. There was a substantial degree of consensus on top hopes and fears but levels of standing on the Cantril ladder of life were still graded according to apartheidera inequalities with black South Africans scoring lower than other race groups. Nonetheless, the majority of South Africans rated their present life better than 5 years ago and projected life to get better in future. Such optimism may place considerable pressure on the state to deliver on personal and societal hopes as the country enters its third decade of democracy.     

Development of a Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual Visibility Management Scale

Many lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals manage the degree to which their sexual orientation is known to others. Visibility management, the process of regulating the exposure of one's orientation, is an important part of the lesbian/gay/bisexual experience in community, family, and virtually all other social settings. The degree to which one allows his or her sexual orientation to be visible can have a profound impact on stress, health, self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, and quality of life. The purpose of the present study was to develop a valid and reliable measure of visibility management. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual-Visibility Management Scale was constructed and piloted with a small sample of LGB adults. Results support the potential utility of the LGB scale based on satisfactory evidence of construct validity, item-level discrimination, and subscale reliability.     

The Population Education Transition Curve: Education Gradients Across Population Exposure to New Health Risks

The salutary effect of formal education on health-risk behaviors and mortality is extensively documented: ceteris paribus, greater educational attainment leads to healthier lives and longevity. Even though the epidemiological evidence has strongly indicated formal education as a leading “social vaccine,” there is intermittent reporting of counter-education gradients for health-risk behavior and associated outcomes for certain populations during specific periods. How can education have both beneficial and harmful effects on health, and under which contexts do particular effects emerge? It is useful to conceptualize the influence of education as a process sensitive to the nature, timing of entry, and uniqueness of a new pleasurable and desirable lifestyle and/or product (such as smoking) with initially unclear health risks for populations. Developed herein is a hypothesis that the education gradient comprises multiple potent pathways (material, psychological, cognitive) by which health-risk behaviors are influenced, and that there can be circumstances under which pathways act in opposite directions or are differentially suppressed and enhanced. We propose the population education transition (PET) curve as a unifying functional form to predict shifting education gradients across the onset and course of a population’s exposure to new health risks and their associated consequences. Then, we estimate PET curves for cases with prior epidemiological evidence of heterogeneous education gradients with health-risk behaviors related to mass-produced cigarettes in China and the United States; saturated fats, sugar, and processed food diets in Latin America; and HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. Each offers speculation on interactions between environmental factors during population exposure and education pathways to health-risk behaviors that could be responsible for the temporal dynamics of PET curves. Past epidemiological studies reporting either negative or positive education gradients may not represent contradictory findings as much as come from analyses unintentionally limited to just one part of the PET process. Last, the PET curve formulation offers richer nuances about educational pathways, macro-historical population dynamics, and the fundamental cause of disease paradigm.     

Intergenerational Neighborhood Attainment and the Legacy of Racial Residential Segregation: A Causal Mediation Analysis

Advances in mediation analysis are used to examine the legacy effects of racial residential segregation in the United States on neighborhood attainments across two familial generations. The legacy effects of segregation are anticipated to operate through two primary pathways: a neighborhood effects pathway and an urban continuity pathway. The neighborhood effects pathway explains why parent’s exposure to racial residential segregation during their family-rearing years can influence the residential outcomes of their children later in life. The urban continuity pathway captures the temporal consistency of the built and topographical environment in providing similar residential opportunities across generations. Findings from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and U.S. Census data indicate that the legacy effect of racial residential segregation among black families operates primarily through the neighborhood effects that influence children growing up. For white families, there is less support for the legacy effects of segregation. The findings are supported by a comprehensive mediation analysis that provides a formal sensitivity analysis, deploys an instrumental variable, and assesses effect heterogeneity. Knowledge of the legacy of segregation moves neighborhood attainment research beyond point-in-time studies of racial residential segregation to provide a deeper understanding into the ways stratified residential environments are reproduced.     

Loneliness and Subjective Well-Being Among Chinese Undergraduates: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy

Previous studies have shown a negative relationship between loneliness and one’s subjective well-being. However, it has not been fully examined within the Chinese context which highlights the importance of social relationship and interpersonal harmony for one’s life, and the mechanism between them has not been thoroughly explored. Based on social cognitive theory, this study examined the main effects of loneliness on individuals’ stress, depression, and life satisfaction, as well as the mediating effect of self-efficacy between them. Survey data were obtained from 444 Chinese undergraduates. The results of multiple regressions revealed that loneliness was negatively correlated with life satisfaction and positively correlated with stress and depression. Moreover, self-efficacy partially mediated the relationship between loneliness and stress, as well as depression, and fully mediated the relationship between loneliness and life satisfaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

     

Assessing the Predictive Value of Fertility Expectations Through a Cognitive–Social Model

This paper grounds its analysis in a novel model (Bachrach and Morgan in Popul Dev Rev, 39:459–485, 2013) that suggests that responses to questions about fertility intentions may reflect distinct phenomena at distinct points in the life course. The model suggests that women form "true" intentions when their circumstances make the issue of childbearing salient and urgent enough to draw the cognitive resources needed to make a conscious plan; before this, women report intentions based on cognitive images of family and self. We test the implications of this model for reported fertility expectations using NLSY79 data that measure expectations throughout the life course. We find that early in the life course, before marriage and parenthood, women’s fertility expectations are associated with family background and cognitive images of family and future self. Later in the life course, as women experience life course transitions that confer statuses normatively associated with childbearing—such as marriage—and parenthood itself, their reported expectations are better predictors of their fertility than before they passed these life course milestones. Our empirical results provide support for a model which has important implications for both the measurement and conceptualization of women’s intended and expected fertility.     

Impact of Gender Binarism on Hijras’ Life Course and Their Access to Fundamental Human Rights in Pakistan

This study adds to the growing body of knowledge on gender nonconformity aspects of heteronormativity by examining its impact on the life course of hijras and their access to fundamental human rights in Pakistan. Drawing on 50 semistructured interviews conducted in two sites, the findings suggest that the participants’ lived experiences associated with gender nonconformity significantly influenced the direction of their life course and their ability to have access to human rights. These experiences spanned from childhood to elderhood across a wide range of settings, such as family, school, guru dera (residence headed by a hijra guru), workplace, and interactions with authorities. The participants’ human rights were not recognized, resulting in abuse, social stigma, discrimination against them, and their exclusion from mainstream society. Finally, implications are drawn for public policy and future research on third gender concerns in Pakistan and elsewhere.     

Medicaid,motherhood, and the challenges of having a healthy pregnancy amidst changing social networks

BackgroundAfrican American women with low income face various challenges to having a healthy pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancies often amplify those challenges and negatively impact women’s ability to get the care that she needs. Research has shown that social networks can improve pregnancy outcomes by helping women cope with and address the problems that they face. However, there is little research on how unintended pregnancy impacts the medical and social support that African American women receive.AimThis research explored how unintended pregnancies impact women’s social networks and the type of support that they need throughout the pregnancy.Design and sampleThis ethnographic study included 20 African American women who used pregnancy services at a health department in the United States. Fourteen women were enrolled in the study during their first or second trimester and were interviewed upon enrollment, in their third trimester, and within one month of giving birth. An additional six women were enrolled and interviewed within one month of giving birth.ResultsAfrican American women’s needs and social support networks change throughout their pregnancy. When medical providers primarily offer pregnancy information and referrals to social service agencies during the first trimester, problems that women have later in the pregnancy are not properly addressed.ConclusionSocial support needs to be accessed at multiple times during the pregnancy. Pregnancy resources should be provided throughout the pregnancy, recognizing that social support and personal struggles evolve during the pregnancy.