Large, pervasive, and persistent racial inequalities exist in the onset, courses, and outcomes of illness. A comprehensive understanding of the patterning of racial disparities indicates that racism in both its institutional and individual forms remains an important determinant. There is an urgent need to build the science base that would identify…

We contribute to research on the relationships between gender, work, and health by using longitudinal, theoretically driven models of mothers' diverse work pathways and adjusting for unequal selection into these pathways. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth-1979 (N = 2,540), we find full-time, continuous employment following a first…

I use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = 4,971) to evaluate the extent to which socioeconomic status affects three health-related (living will, durable power of attorney for health care, and discussions) and one financial (will) component of end-of-life planning. Net worth is positively associated with all four types of planning,…

The authors use data from the Health and Retirement Study's Earnings Benefit File, which links Health and Retirement Study to Social Security Administration records, to estimate the impact of childhood health on earnings curves between the ages of 25 and 50 years. They also investigate the extent to which diminished educational attainment, earlier…

Much research has explored the role of social networks in promoting health through the provision of social support. However, little work has examined how social networks themselves may be structured by health. This article investigates the link between individuals' health and the characteristics of their social network positions.We first develop…

Occupational mobility is highly valued in American society, but is it consequential to women's health? Previous studies have yielded inconsistent results, but most measured occupational mobility by identifying transitions across occupational categories. Drawing from cumulative inequality theory, this study (1) compares objective and subjective…

In this study I investigate the associations of neighborhood socioeconomic and social environments with the health of Asian Americans living in both Asian ethnic neighborhoods and non-Asian neighborhoods. I use a sample of 1962 Asian Americans from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS, 2003-04). Three key findings emerge. First,…

This article addresses a potentially serious problem with the widely used self-rated health (SRH) survey item: that different groups have systematically different ways of using the item's response categories. Analyses based on unadjusted SRH may thus yield misleading results. The authors evaluate anchoring vignettes as a possible solution to this…

This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the "exposure experience"--the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants--is shaped by community…

Despite the recent and rapid worldwide rise in body mass index (BMI), little empirical research outside the developed world has systematically considered the role of cohorts in inaugurating emergent biomorphic disparities. This study integrates aspects of the life course perspective (attention to age- and cohort-level influences) with fundamental…

Using the 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we explore the relationship between racial awareness, perceived discrimination, and self-rated health among black (n = 5,902) and white (n = 28,451) adults. We find that adjusting for group differences in racial awareness and discrimination, in addition to socioeconomic status, explains…

Neighborhood social capital--resources inherent within community networks--has been identified as a potential facilitator of personal well-being. We test hypotheses concerning how neighborhood social capital moderates the influence of parenting strain on mastery (individuals' understanding of their ability to control personal life circumstances)…

What are the social consequences of the recent expansion of newborn screening in the United States? The adoption of new screening technologies has generated diagnostic uncertainty about the nature of screening targets, making it unclear not only whether a newborn will develop a disease but also what the condition actually is. Based on observations…

Just as postsecondary schooling serves as a dividing line between the advantaged and disadvantaged on outcomes like income and marital status, it also serves as a dividing line between the healthy and unhealthy. Why are the better educated healthier? Human capital theory posits that education makes one healthier via cognitive (skill improvements)…

This article seeks to elucidate the relationship between socioeconomic position and health by showing how different facets of socioeconomic position (education and income) affect different stages (onset vs. progression) of health problems. The biomedical literature has generally treated socioeconomic position as a unitary construct. Likewise, the…