Health in the United States is stratified significantly. The stratification in health mirrors broader social inequality, with the socially advantaged generally living longer and healthier lives. While the extreme stratification in health and life expectancy in the United States is well documented, comparatively less research has analyzed how large-scale institutions such as the military and criminal justice system can influence population health and processes of health inequality. Indeed, the military and prisons are especially important for population health and health inequality due to their size, composition of disadvantaged men, high degree of regulation/social control, and ability to shape the life course within the institutions and subsequently. Neighborhoods, are also critically important to shaping health and population health disparities. Thus, the following dissertation analyzes how the military, prisons, and neighborhoods shape population health and health disparities. Using the National Health Interview Survey and the corresponding Linked Mortality file, Chapter 2 shows that black/white inequality in risk of death is smaller among veterans than non-veterans. These findings were net of socioeconomic and behavioral health factors. Additionally, this Chapter shows that the smaller inequality in mortality is concentrated in cohorts who served in the All-Volunteer era. Using the National Health Interview Survey and the Survey of Inmates in State and Correctional Facilities, Chapter 3 shows that the extent to which chronic health conditions vary by educational level is smaller among the incarcerated than non-incarcerated. However, the extent to which infectious diseases differs by educational attainment is significantly larger among the incarcerated population. Chapter 4 uses the Maternal and Infant Health Assessment and the Geographic Research on Well-being study to analyze how long-term neighborhood poverty predicts mother’s reports of their child’s sleep. The findings indicate that children who consistently lived in neighborhoods characterized by long-term high neighborhood poverty had much greater odds of not sleeping the prescribed amount for their age. This was even net of important child, mother, and household characteristics. Overall, the findings stress the importance of considering institutions and neighborhoods when analyzing population health inequality.

Texas’ education system is currently inadequate to meet the state’s future needs for millions of young Texans and there is much at stake for the state’s business and economic interests. Advocates for improving our system for all students – from major educational stakeholders to concerned parents wanting a bright future for their children in terms of economic stability and prosperity – are too-often unheard by our state’s governance and, sometimes, business leaders. These leaders face numerous challenges confronting our state and have not prioritized funding public education at the necessary levels. While it is true that our state has many needs, the main emphasis of this paper is to illustrate how much is at stake for the business community of Texas if we continue to under-educate our children and ill-prepare them for rewarding careers that allow them to properly contribute to both the state and nation’s economy. Educate Fir$t believes that, based on these realities, the business community must fully understand what is at risk from the perspective of their future ability to maintain our financial well-being. This paper seeks to emphasize the irrefutable link between the concerns of public education and those that pertain to the business sector. Education is an investment that affects everyone; it is not a special interest sector impacting only those who work or learn in schools and colleges across the nation. The quality of public education has a notable connection to the proliferation and survival of businesses. We are hopeful that this message will resonate with the business community as well as educational stakeholders, communities that rely on public education, and the legislators who are positioned to help usher in a new generation of better educated, more highly skilled Texans. Many factors in both Texas and the United States contribute to the problems facing public education and will have a major impact on the business community. Among them are a notable increase in the state’s already impressive child population, the constantly evolving technology required by our state’s businesses demanding a workforce with updated skill sets, and the decreased funding of higher education – a vital part of the educational pipeline that provides a link between public primary and secondary schools and the job market.

Purpose: Subjective well-being (SWB) in youths positively relates to family income, however its association with income during childhood is unclear. Using longitudinal data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n = 2234 adolescents, age 12–19 years), we examined whether the timing and duration of low family income in childhood was associated with adolescent SWB. Methods: We categorized family income during childhood into state-specific quintiles. Adolescent SWB was assessed using a 12-item questionnaire (score range 3–18). We used marginal structural modelling to test for sensitive periods of exposure to low income and tested cumulative effects of income by modelling the number of years spent in the poorest income quintiles. Results: A period in early childhood (age 0–2 years) was particularly sensitive to low family income. Adolescent SWB was 1.65 (95% CI 0.40, 2.91) points lower in those who grew up in the poorest income quintiles during early childhood compared with the top quintile. Further, each childhood year spent in the poorest income quintiles was associated with a 0.10 point (95% CI 0.04, 0.16) lower SWB score in adolescence. Conclusions: The timing and duration of low family income in childhood both predict individual differences in adolescent SWB. Further studies are needed to clarify the mechanisms of these models and inform public policies.

Using 2012/13 American Time Use Survey, we find as compared to non-caregivers, caregivers report less time on personal care, social activities and sports and more time on housework. They also report higher stress and lower happiness when engaged in daily activities. Further, using diary information which captures activities during a 24-hour window, we compare caregivers on days they provide care and caregivers on days they do not provide care. Caregivers report more time on housework and less on paid work, and higher levels of sadness when engaged in daily activities. This highlights proximal effects of informal caregiving, even for individuals already engaged in regular caregiving.

The frequency with which people move home has important implications for national economic performance and the well-being of individuals and families. Much contemporary social and migration theory posits that the world is becoming more mobile, leading to the recent ‘mobilities turn’ within the social sciences. Yet, there is mounting evidence to suggest that this may not be true of all types of mobility, nor apply equally to all geographical contexts. For example, it is now clear that internal migration rates have been falling in the USA since at least the 1980s. To what extent might this trend be true of other developed countries? Drawing on detailed empirical literature, Internal Migration in the Developed World examines the long-term trends in internal migration in a variety of more advanced countries to explore the factors that underpin these changes. Using case studies of the USA, UK, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Germany and Italy, this pioneering book presents a critical assessment of the extent to which global structural forces, as opposed to national context, influence internal migration in the Global North. Internal Migration in the Developed World fills the void in this neglected aspect of migration studies and will appeal to a wide disciplinary audience of researchers and students working in Geography, Migration Studies, Population Studies and Development Studies.

Background: Demographic risk factors for multimorbidity have been identified in numerous population-based studies of older adults; however, there is less data on younger populations, despite the fact that approximately 24% of US adults age 18+ have multimorbidity. Understanding multimorbidity earlier in the life course is critical because of the increased likelihood of long-term disability and loss of productivity associated with chronic disease progression. Objective: To examine the associations of education and race/ethnicity with mutimorbidity among adults aged 3064 using cross-sectional data from the 20022014 National Health Interview Surveys. Design: Multimorbidity was defined as having at least 2 of 9 self-reported health conditions. Educational attainment was categorized as less than high school (HS), completed HS or some college, and bachelor's degree or higher. Logistic regression models of multimorbidity controlled for time since last doctor's visit, demographic and socioeconomic measures. Results: Compared to having a bachelor's degree or higher, completing less than HS (OR=1.58, 95% CI = 1.501.66) or HS/some college (OR=1.32, 95% CI = 1.271.37) were both associated with increased odds of multimorbidity net of all included covariates. Non-Hispanic Blacks had greater odds of multimorbidity (OR=1.07, 95% CI = 1.021.11) compared to Non-Hispanic Whites with comparable characteristics. Conclusions: Epidemiologic and demographic research on the burden of multimorbidity among non-elderly adults is limited, but warrants renewed attention given the potential for long-term loss of quality of life, productivity, and well-being for non-elderly adults. Reducing multimorbidity through health promotion efforts across the socioeconomic spectrum and earlier in the life course will be a requirement to age successfully and support overall well-being in the aging US population.

Our experience is anecdotal, but there are data to the same effect: persons living in nursing homes who have urinary incontinence do not have overall lower quality of life2; becoming more dependent on others is not tied to lower psychological well-being3; and quality of life in those with dementia is more tightly correlated with exposure to engaging activities than level of confusion or dementia.4 With some variability, state statutes sharply restrict the circumstances in which clinicians . . .

A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that since the 1990's, sparsely populated counties have replaced large cities as America's most troubled areas by key measures of socioeconomic well-being, a decline that's accelerating

U.S. Army doctrine requires that commanders understand, visualize, and describe the infrastructure component of the Joint Operating Environment to accomplish the Army's missions of protecting, restoring, and developing infrastructure. The functionality of modern cities relies heavily on interdependent infrastructure systems such as those for water, power, and transportation. Disruptions often prop-agate within and across physical infrastructure networks and result in catastrophic con-sequences. The reaction of communities to disasters may further transfer and aggravate the burden on infrastructure and facilitate cascading secondary disruptions. Hence, a holistic analysis framework that integrates infrastructure interdependencies and community behaviors is needed to evaluate vulnerability to disruptions and to assess the impact of a disaster. Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely (SMART) documents are used to assess, measure, and predict the impact of potential infrastructural interdictions. Assessing individuals within the population allows analysis of social well-being in relation to potential cascading infrastructure failure.

The U.S. labor force participation rate has declined since 2007, primarily because of population aging and ongoing trends that preceded the Great Recession. The labor force participation rate has evolved differently, and for different reasons, across demographic groups. A rise in school enrollment has largely offset declining labor force participation for young workers since the 1990s. Labor force participation has been declining for prime age men for decades, and about half of prime age men who are not in the labor force may have a serious health condition that is a barrier to working. Nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on any given day; and in nearly two-thirds of these cases, they take prescription pain medication. Labor force participation has fallen more in U.S. counties where relatively more opioid pain medication is prescribed, causing the problem of depressed labor force participation and the opioid crisis to become intertwined. The labor force participation rate has stopped rising for cohorts of women born after 1960. Prime age men who are out of the labor force report that they experience notably low levels of emotional well-being throughout their days, and that they derive relatively little meaning from their daily activities. Employed women and women not in the labor force, by contrast, report similar levels of subjective well-being; but women not in the labor force who cite a reason other than “home responsibilities” as their main reason report notably low levels of emotional well-being. During the past decade, retirements have increased by about the same amount as aggregate labor force participation has declined, and the retirement rate is expected to continue to rise. A meaningful rise in labor force participation will require a reversal in the secular trends affecting various demographic groups, and perhaps immigration reform.

Emotional well-being has become an important societal goal given the rising evidence from psychology research that positive emotions have long-lasting benefits for human development. Although daily travel behavior has been found to influence emotional well-being, existing research in the field has focused on limited travel behavior dimensions such as travel mode and/or travel duration. Other dimensions such as travel purpose and travel companionship have received limited attention. Using data from the 2012-2013 American Time Use Survey, this paper offers a comprehensive assessment of how various trip- and personal-level factors relates to various positive and negative emotions. Results show that both positive and negative emotions are shaped in various ways by the mode, duration, purpose, and companionship characteristics of a trip. Of the modes examined, biking is the happiest mode; public transit is the least happy, least meaningful, and most tiresome mode; and utilitarian walking for transportation is strongly associated with negative motions. Long travel (>45 Mins) is the least happy and most tiresome and stressful. While short travel (<15 mins) is the least tiresome and stressful, it is also the least meaningful. Travel purpose shows strong associations with both positive and negative emotions. Travel for discretionary purposes such as leisure, exercise, and community activities is associated with higher levels of positive emotions and lower levels of negative emotions than travel for work or household maintenance. Travel companionship shows significant associations with positive emotions but limited associations with negative emotions. Travel with family members (except parents) and/or friends is the happiest. Besides trip-level factors, personal demographics, health conditions, and residential locations play significant roles in predicting travel-related emotions. During trips, immigrants and low-income people tend to experience more intensive emotions regardless of positive or negative. Implications of these findings for transportation policy and future research directions are discussed.

My dissertation examines economic determinants of household financial decisions and investor behaviors. It contains three essays. The first essay investigates whether gender norms shape intra-household financial decision making. Analyzing microdata covering more than 30 million U.S. households, I document that families with a financially sophisticated husband are more likely to participate in the stock market than those with a wife of equal financial sophistication. Consistent with the gender norm hypothesis, the baseline effect is attenuated among individuals brought up by working mothers, but becomes stronger among descendants of pre-industrial societies in which women specialized in activities within the home and households with a husband born and raised in a southern state. A randomized controlled experiment further reveals that female identity hinders idea contribution by the wife. In contrast, male identity causes men to be less open to an opposing viewpoint of their wife, even if her proposition in optimal. These things suggest that gender identity norms can have real consequences for household financial well-being. The second essay explores the impact of local agglomeration economies on stock market participation. We find that when the industry in which individuals work is locally agglomerated, they are more likely to participate in the stock market. Further, we show that this relationship is especially strong among skilled workers. We find that the local agglomeration effect is not explained by risk tolerance, worker inertia, or a preference for stocks of firms that are in the same industry as the worker. Instead, our findings are consistent with local agglomeration enhancing human capital and in turn, raising workers’ optimal allocations to risky assets. More generally, our analysis underscores the role of geography in shaping human capital and household financial decisions. The third essay examines whether momentum in stock prices is induced by changes in the political environment. We find that momentum profits are concentrated among politically sensitive firms and industries. A trading strategy with a long position in winner portfolios that are politically unfavored and a short position in losers that are politically favored eliminates all momentum profits. Further, our political sensitivity based factor explains 25% (40%) of monthly stock (industry) momentum alphas. Collectively, our results suggest that investor underreaction to political information generates momentum in stock and industry returns.

Although many studies have found that female legislators pursue policies important to women, we know relatively little concerning the effect of women’s descriptive representation (WDR) on women’s quality of life. We address this question by examining the relationship between the election of women state legislators and public health. Specifically, we estimate the effect of WDR on premature death rates from 1981-2010, utilizing an error correction model and a novel instrumental variable approach to mitigate endogeneity. We find that WDR serves to improve the well-being of both women and men. However, the effect of WDR is significantly stronger for women (compared to men) in states that play a larger role in the provision of healthcare. Overall, our results suggest that policy remedies aimed at improving the severe underrepresentation of women in government may help improve the relatively low ranking of the United States on indicators of public health.

In this accessible, engaging, and up-to-date course book, Susan L. Brown employs ethnographic vignettes and demographic data to introduce students to twenty-first century perspectives of contemporary families. Conceived of as a primary or secondary text in classes on family and marriage, this book probes momentous shifts in the definition of family, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage and policy debates on welfare reform and work-familly issues. Brown also chronicles the rise in non-marital childbearing and single mother families and the decline of "traditional" marriage. The book delves into the historical roots of family change, current trends of family formation and dissolution, and the implications of family change for the well-being of adults and children. With a lens towards socioeconomic inequality and racial-ethnic variation in family patterns, Families in America illustrates how family diversity is now the norm.

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.

Fresno is the nations top agricultural county, yet it struggles with slow growth, high unemployment, and an economy dominated by low-wage jobs and few pathways into the middle class. While communities of color account for 68 percent of the population-up from 38 percent in 1980 - the countys racial inequities persist across all indicators of community health and well-being. To build a stronger Fresno, stakeholders must start with equity-just and fair inclusion into a society in which all, including every racial and ethnic group, can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. Equity seeks to counteract the barriers and systemic exclusions (historic and current) that prevent people from realizing their potential. Leaders in the private, public, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors must commit to putting all residents on the path to economic security through equity-focused strategies and policies to grow good jobs, invest in human capital, remove barriers, and expand opportunities for communities of color currently being left behind.

We study the effects of education on the financial outcomes of youth using Kenyas introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE) in 2003 as an exogenous shock to schooling. Our identification strategy compares changes across cohorts, and across regions with differing levels of pre-FPE enrollment. We find that FPE is associated with increases in educational attainment and increased use of formal financial services, particularly through mobile banking. Examining potential mechanisms, we find increases in employment rates and incomes but limited improvements in effective numeracy, retirement planning, and subjective financial well-being. Our results suggest that education primarily increased financial inclusion by raising labor earnings, with little direct impact on financial capability.

This study uses data from the ATUS Well-Being module to examine parents’ experience of childcare activities across four domains of affect – happiness, tiredness, stress, and meaning – and how this differs by social class. We also investigate the care context (i.e. the type of childcare activity, the presence of others, the care location, and the timing and extent of care) as a potential mediator of social class differences in parents’ affect during childcare activities. Preliminary results indicate that increases in fathers’ education are associated with less happiness, more stress, and less tiredness during childcare activities and that these effects are not explained by differences in the care context. By contrast, changes in mothers’ education appear to have little effect on affect during childcare activities. We will expand these analyses in the future using income and occupational prestige as alternative measures of social class.

With nearly half of US births occurring out of wedlock, understanding how parents navigate their relationship options is important. This paper examines the consequences of a large exogenous change to parental relationship contract options on parental behavior and child well-being. Identification comes from the staggered timing of state reforms that substantially lowered the cost of legal paternity establishment. I show that the resulting increases in paternity establishment are partially driven by reductions in parental marriage. Although unmarried fathers become more involved with their children along some dimensions, the net effects on father involvement and child well-being are negative or zero.

Data on secondary school children in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden show that large differences exist in family structure within the minority population: In some groups, father absence is more common than among natives; in others, it is less common. These patterns reflect the differences in family structure in the origin countries, but the migration process also plays a role. Next, it is found that father absence has negative effects on immigrant children's well-being, but these effects appear weaker in minority groups where father absence is more common. Heterogeneous effects are interpreted in terms of different degrees of institutionalization of father absence in different minority groups.