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Background: Empirical evidence from European countries has shown that economic conditions in early life are associated with mortality risk. This study aims to assess the effects of economic conditions in early life, as well as their interaction with parental education, on the risk of adult mortality in the U.S. Methods: To capture exogenous variation of economic conditions early in life, we use the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) cyclical deviation during a respondent's birth year. Using the linked U.S. General Social Survey and National Death Index data (1979–2008), we employed parametric frailty survival models to examine the effects of economic conditions in early life on all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Results: We found that exposure to recession in the first year of life was associated with increased all-cause mortality only among women (hazard ratio = 1.54, 95% CI 1.03–2.31). This adverse effect was also found in women's mortality from cancers (hazard ratio = 2.24, 95% CI 1.18–4.28). We also found a significant interaction between economic conditions in infancy and paternal education on women's mortality risk—higher paternal education was protective against mortality under good economic conditions in infancy; however, higher paternal education was associated with greater mortality risk under poor economic conditions in infancy. We discuss how aspiration theory may explain these results. Conclusion: Our study concludes that worse macroeconomic conditions early in life heighten the risk of mortality among women, and paternal education moderates this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objectives: No studies have focused on socioeconomic disparities in obesity within and between cohorts. Our objectives were to examine income gradients in obesity between birth‐cohorts (inter‐cohort variations) and within each birth‐cohort (intra‐cohort variations) by gender and race/ethnicity. Methods: Our sample includes 56,820 white and black adults from pooled, cross‐sectional National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (1971–2012). We fit a series of logistic hierarchical Age‐Period‐Cohort models to control for the effects of age and period, simultaneously. Predicted probabilities of obesity by poverty‐to‐income ratio were estimated and graphed for 5‐year cohort groups from 1901–1990. We also stratified this relationship for four gender and racial/ethnic subgroups. Results: Obesity disparities due to income were weaker for post‐World War I and II generations, specifically the mid‐1920s and the mid‐1940s to 1950s cohorts, than for other cohorts. In contrast, we found greater income gradients in obesity among cohorts from the 1930s to mid‐1940s and mid‐1960s to 1970s. Moreover, obesity disparities due to income across cohorts vary markedly by gender and race/ethnicity. White women with higher income consistently exhibited a lower likelihood of obesity than those with lower income since early 1900s cohorts; whereas, black men with higher income exhibited higher risks of obesity than those with lower income in most cohorts. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that strategies that address race and/or gender inequalities in obesity should be cognizant of significant historical factors that may be unique to cohorts. Period‐based approaches that ignore life‐course experiences captured in significant cohort‐based experiences may limit the utility of policies and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the impact of a student's race on disciplinary action and academic achievement in the U.S., particularly focusing on race gaps in North Carolina's educational system. It addresses the use of demographic methods to investigate the effects of race gaps on individual students, peer groups, and overall school composition. It comments on the importance of students' family and the distribution of students across the state to explaining demographic differences in middle schools in North Carolina.

Objectives. We elucidated how US late-life disability prevalence has changed over the past 3 decades. Methods. We examined activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) disability trends by using age-period-cohort (APC) models among older adults aged 70 years or older who responded to the National Health Interview Survey between 1982 and 2009. We fitted logistic regressions for ADL and IADL disabilities and for each of the 3 APC trends with 2 models: unadjusted and fully adjusted for age, period, cohort, and sociodemographic variables. Results. The unadjusted and adjusted period trends showed a substantial decline in IADL disability, and ADL disability remained stable across time. Unadjusted cohort trends for both outcomes also showed continual declines across successive cohorts; however, increasing cohort trends were evident in the adjusted models. Conclusions. More recent cohorts of US older adults are becoming more disabled, net of aging and period effects. The net upward cohort trends in ADL and IADL disabilities remain unexplained. Further studies should explore cohort-specific determinants contributing to the increase of cohort-based disability among US older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study explores socio-economic gradients in height (stature-for-age) among a nationally representative sample of 2–6 year old children in the United States. We use NHANES III (1988–1994) Youth data linked with a special Natality Data supplement which contains information from birth certificates among sampled NHANES III Youth who are <7years of age. Our results indicate significant socio-economic gradients for both maternal education and family income, net of controls for confounders, including: birth weight, gestational age, family size, and parental heights. These results are in stark contrast to those from other developed countries that seem to indicate diminished or eliminated socio-economic disparities, net of known confounders. In the United States, it appears that socio-economic gradients have an effect on birth outcomes, and continue to have an additional direct and independent effect on height, even in early childhood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Gang violence remains an ongoing crisis in many communities in the United States. This paper assesses the potential association of gang-occupied neighborhoods with birth outcomes. Adverse birth outcomes serve as a "barometer" of population health, denoting both poor conditions for human development and portending future public health concerns. We draw upon (1) Los Angeles County Vital Statistics Birth Records (2008-2012), (2) GIS information on gang territory boundaries, (3) LA city geo-coded crime data, and (4) the 2010 U.S. Census and 2006-2010 American Community Survey. We find an association between gang-occupied neighborhoods and adverse birth outcomes; however, this association is largely explained by other neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics, crime notwithstanding. We also find that gangland neighborhoods tend to exacerbate the effects of crime for all birth outcomes, but only significantly so for small for gestational age births. Lastly, gang co-residence, crime, and other neighborhood demographics explain a substantial portion of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes. Gangland neighborhoods appear to be a novel contributor to both population health and health disparities. Future studies should address these relationships in a broad range of metropolitan settings, paying careful attention to causal linkages and moderating effects of gangs and crime.

Objectives: This study delineates activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) black-white disparity trends by age, period, and cohort (APC) and explores sociodemographic contributors of cohort-based disparity trends., Method: We utilized multiple cross-sectional waves of National Health Interview Survey data (1982-2009) to describe APC trends of ADL and IADL disparities using a cross-classified random effect model. Further, we decomposed the cohort-based disparity trends using Fairlie's decomposition method for nonlinear outcomes., Results: The crossover ADL and IADL disparities (whites > blacks) occurring at age 75 increased with age and reached a plateau at age of 80, whereas period-based ADL and IADL disparities remained constant for the past 3 decades. The cohort disparity trends for both disabilities showed a decline with each successive cohort except for ADL disparity among women., Discussion: We examined the role of aging on racial disparity in disability and found support for the racial crossover effect. Further, the racial disparity in disability will disappear should the observed pattern of declining cohort-based ADL and IADL disparities persist. Although education, income, and marital status are important sociodemographic contributors to cohort disparity trends, future studies should investigate individual behavioral health determinants and cohort-specific characteristics that explain the cohort-based racial difference in ADL and IADL disabilities., (© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

This paper uses data from the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys (N = 1,513,097) to describe and explain temporal patterns in black-white health disparities with models that simultaneously consider the unique effects of age, period, and cohort. First, we employ cross-classified random effects age-period-cohort (APC) models to document black-white disparities in self-rated health across temporal dimensions. Second, we use decomposition techniques to shed light on the extent to which socio-economic shifts in cohort composition explain the age and period adjusted racial health disparities across successive birth cohorts. Third, we examine the extent to which exogenous conditions at the time of birth help explain the racial disparities across successive cohorts. Results show that black-white disparities are wider among the pre-1935 cohorts for women, falling thereafter; disparities for men exhibit a similar pattern but exhibit narrowing among cohorts born earlier in the century. Differences in socioeconomic composition consistently contribute to racial health disparities across cohorts; notably, marital status differences by race emerge as an increasingly important explanatory factor in more recent cohorts for women whereas employment differences by race emerge as increasingly salient in more recent cohorts for men. Finally, our cohort characteristics models suggest that cohort economic conditions at the time of birth (percent large family, farm or Southern birth) help explain racial disparities in health for both men and women., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

As nonmarital childbearing escalated in the United States over the past half century, fragile families--defined as unmarried couples with children--drew increased interest from researchers and policy makers. Sara McLanahan and Audrey Beck discuss four aspects of parental relationships in these families: the quality of parents' intimate relationship, the stability of that relationship, the quality of the co-parenting relationship among parents who live apart, and nonresident fathers' involvement with their child. At the time of their child's birth, half of the parents in fragile families are living together and another third are living apart but romantically involved. Despite high hopes at birth, five years later only a third of parents are still together, and new partners and new children are common, leading to high levels of instability and complexity in these families. Drawing on findings from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, McLanahan and Beck highlight a number of predictors of low relationship quality and stability in these families, including low economic resources, government policies that discourage marriage, gender distrust and acceptance of single motherhood, sex ratios that favor men, children from previous unions, and psychological factors that make it difficult for parents to maintain healthy relationships. No single factor appears to have a dominant effect. The authors next discuss two types of experiments that attempt to establish causal effects on parental relationships: those aimed at altering economic resources and those aimed at improving relationships. What can be done to strengthen parental relationships in fragile families? The authors note that although economic resources are a consistent predictor of stable relationships, researchers and policy makers lack good causal information on whether increasing fathers' employment and earnings will increase relationship quality and union stability. They also note that analysts need to know more about whether relationship quality in fragile families can be improved directly and whether doing so will increase union stability, father involvement, and co-parenting quality.

More than a century of empirical evidence links marital status to mortality. However, the hazards of dying associated with long-term marital trajectories and contributing risk factors are largely unknown. The authors used 1992-2006 prospective data from a cohort of US adults to investigate the impact of current marital status, marriage timing, divorce and widow transitions, and marital durations on mortality. Multivariate hazard ratios were significantly higher for adults currently divorced and widowed, married at young ages (< or =18 years), who accumulated divorce and widow transitions (among women), and who were divorced for 1-4 years. Results also showed significantly lower risks of mortality for men married after age 25 years compared with on time (ages 19-25 years) and among women experiencing > or =10 years of divorce and > or =5 years of widowhood relative to those without exposure to these statuses. For both sexes, accumulation of marriage duration was the most robust predictor of survival. Results from risk-adjusted models indicated that socioeconomic resources, health behaviors, and health status attenuated the associations in different ways for men and women. The study demonstrates that traditional measures oversimplify the relation between marital status and mortality and that sex differences are related to a nexus of marital experiences and associated health risks.