Race,deprivation, and immigrant isolation: The spatial demography of air-toxic clusters in the continental United States

This article contributes to environmental inequality outcomes research on the spatial and demographic factors associated with cumulative air-toxic health risks at multiple geographic scales across the United States. It employs a rigorous spatial cluster analysis of census tract-level 2005 estimated lifetime cancer risk (LCR) of ambient air-toxic emissions from stationary (e.g., facility) and mobile (e.g., vehicular) sources to locate spatial clusters of air-toxic LCR risk in the continental United States. It then tests intersectional environmental inequality hypotheses on the predictors of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters with tract-level principal component factor measures of economic deprivation by race and immigrant status. Logistic regression analyses show that net of controls, isolated Latino immigrant-economic deprivation is the strongest positive demographic predictor of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters, followed by black-economic deprivation and isolated Asian/Pacific Islander immigrant-economic deprivation. Findings suggest scholarly and practical implications for future research, advocacy, and policy.     

Foreign-born health integration during the transition to adulthood: The case of weight

Nativity differences in youths’ health in the United States are striking—the children of foreign-born parents often have healthier outcomes than those of native-born parents. However, very little is known about how immigrant-native differences evolve within the same individuals over time, or about life cycle aspects of the health-related integration of youth with migration backgrounds. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I examine nativity differences in trajectories of weight gain during adolescence and early adulthood, as well as the degree to which temporal patterns are stratified by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. I examine whether nativity differences converge, diverge or remain stable over time, and whether patterns are socially stratified within and across nativity groups. I find that first-generation adolescents begin at a lower weight than their third generation peers and gain weight at a significantly slower pace, resulting in meaningful differences by early adulthood. More complex examination of the relationship between nativity and weight gain reveals additional differences by ethnicity: the foreign-born advantage over time does not extend as strongly to Hispanic adolescents. The findings demonstrate how the health-related integration of foreign-born youth is tied to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic circumstances, and suggest the need to examine the ways in which social circumstances and health change together.     

Trends in exposure to industrial air toxins for different racial and socioeconomic groups: A spatial and temporal examination of environmental inequality in the U.S. from 1995 to 2004

In recent decades there have been dramatic declines in industrial air toxins. However, there has yet to be a national study investigating if the drop has mitigated the unequal exposure to industrial toxins by race and social class. This paper addresses this by developing a unique dataset of air pollution exposure estimates, by aggregating the annual fall-out location of 415 air toxins, from 17,604 facilities, for the years 1995 to 2004 up to census block groups (N = 216,159/year). These annual estimates of exposure were matched with census data to calculate trends in exposure for different racial and socioeconomic groups. Results show that exposure to air toxins has decreased for everyone, but African-Americans are consistently more exposed than Whites and Hispanics and socioeconomic status is not as protective for African-Americans. These results by race were further explored using spatially specified multilevel models which examine trends over time and across institutional boundaries.     

The racialized construction of exceptionality: Experimental evidence of race/ethnicity effects on teachers' interventions

Scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners have long argued that students of color are over-represented in special education and under-represented in gifted education, arguing that educators make racially/ethnically biased decisions to refer and qualify students with disabilities and giftedness. Recent research has called this into question, focusing on the role of confounders of race/ethnicity. However, the role of educator decisions in the disproportionality is still unclear. In this study, I examine the role of student race/ethnicity in teachers' categorization of student needs as “exceptional” and in need of special or gifted education services. I use an original survey experiment in which teachers read case studies of fictional male students in which the race/ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and exceptionality characteristics were experimentally manipulated. The teachers are then asked whether they would refer the student for exceptionality testing. My findings suggest a complex intersection of race/ethnicity and exceptionality, in which white boys are more likely to be suspected of having exceptionalities when they exhibit academic challenges, while boys of color are more likely to be suspected when they exhibit behavioral challenges. This suggests that the racialized construction of exceptionalities reflects differential academic expectations and interpretations of behavior by race/ethnicity, with implications for the subjectivity of exceptionality identification and for the exacerbation of racial/ethnic inequalities in education.     

“Like Parent, Like Child?”: The intergenerational transmission of nonmarital childbearing

Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 11,180) are used to examine the intergenerational transmission of nonmarital childbearing for US men and women. Findings suggest that being born to unmarried parents increases the risk of offspring having a nonmarital first birth, net of various confounding characteristics. This intergenerational link appears to particularly operate via parents’ breaking up before offspring are age 14 and offspring’s young age at first sex. While the link across two generations in nonmarital childbearing is not accounted for by parents’ socioeconomic status (measured as fathers’ education), several mediating factors vary by socioeconomic background. Gender and race/ethnicity also moderate the intergenerational transmission of nonmarital childbearing. This research sheds light on the prevalence of, and process by which, nonmarital childbearing is repeated across generations, which has important implications for long-term social stratification and inequality.     

Gendered tri-racial stratification and health disparities

Despite extensive evidence confirming racial and gender health disparities, little research considers how race theory might aid in understanding these patterns. Using the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), this study fills this void by integrating two research areas—sociology of race and medical sociology—to assess the utility of Bonilla-Silva's tri-racial stratification perspective in predicting health patterns. More specifically, I address the following questions: is the tri-racial stratification thesis aligned with the health profiles of racial groups in the U.S.? Does the applicability of this perspective differ for women and men? Last, do the health patterns suggested by tri-racial stratification persist after adjusting for social factors (socioeconomic status and social support) often invoked to explain health disparities? Results indicate that the racial patterning of life-threatening conditions lend partial support for tri-racial stratification for women and men. Self-rated health findings yield counterintuitive patterns. Furthermore, social factors do not explain the majority of ethnic differences in health. Research and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Discovering complex interrelationships between socioeconomic status and health in Europe: A case study applying Bayesian Networks

Studies assume that socioeconomic status determines individuals’ states of health, but how does health determine socioeconomic status? And how does this association vary depending on contextual differences? To answer this question, our study uses an additive Bayesian Networks model to explain the interrelationships between health and socioeconomic determinants using complex and messy data. This model has been used to find the most probable structure in a network to describe the interdependence of these factors in five European welfare state regimes. The advantage of this study is that it offers a specific picture to describe the complex interrelationship between socioeconomic determinants and health, producing a network that is controlled by socio-demographic factors such as gender and age. The present work provides a general framework to describe and understand the complex association between socioeconomic determinants and health.     

Working and disability expectancies at older ages: The role of childhood circumstances and education

The ability to work at older ages depends on health and education. Both accumulate starting very early in life. We assess how childhood disadvantages combine with education to affect working and health trajectories. Applying multistate period life tables to data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the period 2008–2014, we estimate how the residual life expectancy at age 50 is distributed in number of years of work and disability, by number of childhood disadvantages, gender, and race/ethnicity. Our findings indicate that number of childhood disadvantages is negatively associated with work and positively with disability, irrespective of gender and race/ethnicity. Childhood disadvantages intersect with low education resulting in shorter lives, and redistributing life years from work to disability. Among the highly educated, health and work differences between groups of childhood disadvantage are small. Combining multistate models and inverse probability weighting, we show that the return of high education is greater among the most disadvantaged.     

Extended household transitions, race/ethnicity, and early childhood cognitive outcomes

Beyond mothers’ union status transitions, other adults’ transitions into and out of the household contribute to family instability, particularly in early childhood. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (N ≅ 8550), this study examines associations between extended household transitions and age 2 cognitive development. A substantial minority of toddlers experiences these transitions, and their consequences vary by household member type, entry versus exit, and race/ethnicity. Extended household transitions predict lower cognitive scores for white children, but the selection of low-socioeconomic status families into extended households explains these disparities. Grandparent transitions predict significantly higher cognitive scores for African American and Latino children than whites, and some “other adult” transitions predict higher scores for Latinos than African Americans and whites. Extended household transitions’ consequences are independent of co-occurring residential moves and partner transitions. Findings suggest that studying extended household transitions is useful for understanding children’s early development, and their consequences vary by race/ethnicity.     

Explaining Life Chances in China's Economic Transformation: A Life Course Approach

In this study, we develop a life course argument to link institutional change and individuals' life chances. We argue that timing (in terms of a particular cohort's stage in the life course) plays a critical role in moderating potential impacts of large-scale social changes on individual life chances because (1) life stage induces distinctive cohort responses to opportunities and risks in socioeconomic transformations, and (2) life stage (and, hence, cohort) is also closely correlated with one's position in the existing social structure. We situate our study in the context of the recent socioeconomic changes in the People's Republic of China, 1980–1994. We test our theoretical arguments and hypotheses in an empirical study of career pathways, using a national sample of urban workers drawn from 20 Chinese cities. Our findings show distinctive cohort variations in (1) patterns of job shifts, indicating cohort-based responses to opportunities and risks, and (2) the determinants of economic resources (personal income), reflecting variations in allocative mechanisms in shaping career pathways across cohorts.     

Towards climate justice: How do the most vulnerable weigh environment–economy trade-offs?

The world’s poor are especially vulnerable to environmental disasters, including the adverse consequences of climate change. This creates a challenge for climate justice advocates who seek to ensure that those least responsible for causing climate change do not bear unwanted burdens of mitigation. One way to promote climate justice could be to pay particular attention to the environmental policy preferences of citizens from poorer, lower-emitting countries. This paper examines opinions on environment–economy trade-offs and willingness to make personal financial contributions to protect the environment among residents of 42 developed and developing countries using data from the 2005–2008 World Values Survey, the 2010 Climate Risk Index, and World Bank development indicators. Results reveal that individuals in developing countries are less likely to support policies to prioritize environmental protection over economic growth but are more willing to donate personal income for pro-environmental efforts compared to citizens of more developed nations.     

Patterns of local segregation: Do they matter for neighborhood crime?

In this paper, we extend recent research on the spatial measurement of segregation and the spatial dynamics of urban crime by conceptualizing, measuring, and describing local segregation by race–ethnicity and economic status, and examining the linkages of these conditions with levels of neighborhood violent and property crime. The analyses are based on all 8895 census tracts within a sample of 86 large U.S. cities. We fit multilevel models of crime that incorporate measures of local segregation. The results reveal that, net of city-level and neighborhood characteristics, White–Black local segregation is associated with lower violent and property crime. In contrast, local segregation of low income from high income households is connected with higher crime, particularly neighborhood violence.     

Self-rated health at the intersection of sexual identity and union status

There is a well-established relationship between union status and health within the general population, and growing evidence of an association between sexual identity and well-being. Yet, what is unknown is whether union status stratifies health outcomes across sexual identity categories. In order to elucidate this question, we analyzed nationally representative population-based data from the National Health Interview Surveys 2013–2014 (N = 53,135) to examine variation in self-rated health by sexual partnership status (i.e., by sexual identity across union status). We further test the role of socioeconomic status and gender in these associations. Results from logistic regression models show that union status stratifies self-rated health across gay, lesbian, and heterosexual populations, albeit in different ways for men and women. Socioeconomic status does not play a major role in accounting for these differences. Findings highlight the need for specific interventions with lesbian women, who appear to experience the most strident disadvantage across union status categories.     

Misconceived equity? Health care resources,contextual poverty,and child health disparities in Peru

Although many studies have examined determinants of child health, fewer have explored factors explaining regional disparities in child health outcomes. In the Peruvian context, we examined the relationship between regional disparities in child malnutrition and local variation in health resources (health care resources and the socioeconomic environment). Using the Peruvian 2007–2008 Continuous Demographic and Health Survey (N = 8020) and governmental administrative data, our analyses show that 1) only selected types of health care resources (medical professionals and outpatient visits) are related to child nutritional status, 2) local poverty predicts nutritional status net of household characteristics, and, most importantly, 3) a significant portion of regional differences in child malnutrition are explained by local poverty, whereas health care resources are not associated with regional disparities. These findings suggest that the local socioeconomic environment is a key determinant of both child health outcomes and regional disparities in these outcomes.     

Partner selection and social capital in the status attainment process

Why is individual success so strongly affected by parental socioeconomic status? We argue that parental socioeconomic status affects the socioeconomic status of one's romantic partner, thereby partially determining one's own social capital and socioeconomic status. Censored-inflated structural equation models using data from the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (NELLS) and British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) confirm these relationships, while cross-lagged analyses suggest that they may be causal in nature. The strong tendency for people to have a romantic partner that reflects their socioeconomic origin shows how far the influence of the parental home stretches and why it does so.     

可持续发展环境伦理观:一种新型的环境伦理理论

可持续发展环境伦理观是学术界研究可持续发展和环境伦理学过程中形成的一种新型的环境伦理理论。人与自然和谐统一的整体价值观是可持续发展环境伦理观的理论基础。环境公正是可持续发展环境伦理观的社会道德原则的主要内容。可持续发展环境伦理观对环境伦理学的人类中心论和非人类中心论采取整合态度 ,因而能够超越这两派 ,成为包容性更强、内容更丰富、体系更完备的理论 ,并能够在不同层面上指导人类保护环境的实践活动     

Reconsidering residential mobility: Differential effects on child wellbeing by race and ethnicity

Residential mobility is a common experience among Americans, especially children. Most previous research finds residential mobility has negative effects on children's educational attainment, delinquency, substance abuse, and physical and mental health. Previous research, however, does not fully explore whether the effect of mobility differs by child race/ethnicity, in part because many of the samples used for these studies were majority white or exclusively non-white or disadvantaged. In addition, previous research rarely fully accounts for factors that predict selection into mobility and that may also be related to the outcome of interest. This study simultaneously addresses both of these limitations by estimating the effect of moving homes on children's emotional and behavioral wellbeing using first difference models and a diverse longitudinal sample from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. I find that, after controlling for a wide range of individual, caregiver, household and neighborhood characteristics, the effects of moving among African American and Latino children are significantly worse than among white children.     

Educational differences in health risks and illness over the life course: A test of cumulative disadvantage theory

This study tests the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis by examining the age-varying relationships between education, health risks, and disease onset and survival duration. Results based on 20 years of longitudinal data suggest that education is related to both the individual and accumulated number of behavioral, social, and economic health-risks, which in turn, are related to increasing educational differences in rates of disease incidence and survival. For hypertension, behavioral risks fully account for education’s negative effect on disease onset whereas educational differences in survival are best explained by the accumulation of social and economic risks. For heart attack, a combination of behavioral, social, and economic risks mediate the association between education and incidence, but neither the individual nor accumulated health-risks could account for education’s positive effect on surviving after a heart attack. Similar findings for diabetes and stroke are also discussed.     

Life course transitions in early adulthood and SES disparities in tobacco use

A huge literature has documented adult socioeconomic disparities in smoking but says less about how these disparities emerge over the life course. Building on findings that smoking among adolescents differs only modestly by parental SES, we utilize a life course perspective on social differentiation to help explain the widening disparities in smoking in young adulthood. Our theory suggests that achieved socioeconomic status and the nature and timing of adult role transitions affect age-based trajectories of smoking and widen disparities in adult smoking. The analyses use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which follows a representative national sample over four waves from ages 11–17 in 1994/1995 to 26–34 in 2007/2008. The results show divergent age trajectories in smoking by parental education and that achieved socioeconomic status and life course roles in young adulthood account in good part for differences in the age trajectories. The findings demonstrate the value of the life course perspective in understanding processes of increasing stratification in health behavior and health during the transition to adulthood.     

Sexual identities and participation in liberal and conservative social movements

The desire for social change, political activism, and sexual identities may all be related. Lesbians and gays generally contest heterosexism more than heterosexuals but we do not know how sexual identities sways participation in class, race, and gender based social movements. When analyzing the American National Election Surveys of 2012 (n = 3519), gays and lesbians were about twenty times more likely to join LGB justice campaigns than heterosexuals. Moreover, the greater activism of gays and lesbians also crossed over to recent Occupy Wall Street, peace, and environmental mobilizations. Finally, this analysis ends with logistic regressions that determine if any sexual identity gaps in movement participation are the result of demographic, contextual, and ideological covariates.