{"title":"Status, despair, and epigenetic age acceleration: Chains of risk?","authors":"Aniruddha Das","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2539691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2025.2539691","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biological age acceleration predicts multiple \"diseases of aging.\" Objective and subjective social statuses have both been prospectively linked to this outcome. An established chain-of-risk framework suggests that \"effects\" of each may be mediated by one's subsequent structural position. A separate deaths-of-despair literature identifies a person's sense of futility as another potential link. Such chains remain underexplored. The current study used data from three waves (2008-2016) of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to fill these gaps. The analysis was done through a counterfactual regression-with-residuals (RWR) approach. Asimulated decline in a person's objective but not subjective status predicted their age acceleration 8 years later. Contrary to chain-of-risk conceptions, intermediate social standing did not channel effects. Neither did despair. Findings were more consistent with a direct \"material shocks\" explanation for status-aging linkages than an indirect or psychosocial one. Implications for aging theory and for interventions are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144745418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fast and slow aging in Brazil: An analysis of inequalities in population dynamics across social groups.","authors":"Anderson Gonçalves, Luciana Correia Alves","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2527040","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2527040","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>To analyze the inequalities of population aging in Brazil by a new measure - relative age combined with characteristics approach.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Data from the 2015-2016 Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil) were analyzed. Population subgroups over 50 years old had their relative ages calculated, considering schooling level and self-reported skin color/race. Handgrip strength was employed as a physical health indicator.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Results show that Brazilians of the same birth cohort can have more than 10 years of difference between their relative ages. Depending on the schooling level, Brazilians can present characteristics of people 10 years younger (or older) compared with those in the same chronological age. Males who declared themselves Brown have their relative ages up to 4.9 years higher compared with those in the same chronological age and White.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144576547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of husband's work disability on wife's employment decisions in rural China.","authors":"Zhenping Song, Zheng Shen, Jiangliang Zheng","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2527048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2025.2527048","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Work disability has become a global public health problem and places a considerable burden on individuals and families. This paper uses data from the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey to investigate the impact of husband's work disability on wife's employment decisions in rural areas of China. Estimation results do not indicate a disability-related added worker effect but show a significant caregiver effect; wives of disabled husbands experience a reduction in the likelihood of employment participation. Results also show that a husband's work disability leads to a lower likelihood that the wife will engage in self-employment rather than wage employment. This may be because the flexibility of self-employment helps women to adjust their labor patterns to care for disabled husbands. The mechanism analysis demonstrates that the disability of husbands does lead to a greater likelihood that the wife will provide more care to the family while at the same time, increasing the household health expenditure.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144561468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analysis of fertility policy differences based on policy continuity and policy effectiveness in China.","authors":"Tinggui Chen, Peixin Hou, Bing Wang, Jianjun Yang","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2527033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2025.2527033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fertility policy directly affects the fertility decisions of residents' families, and has the greatest impact on the daily lives of China's residents and on the country's economic and social development. In recent years, as the demographic situation has changed, China's fertility policy has undergone a series of adjustments, and the government has implemented different incentives in the legal system, child care, education, and maternity insurance to stimulate fertility intention. This is a major shift in China's fertility policy from \"family planning\" to \"fertility support.\" In the process of policy adjustment, a series of problems emerged. First, the continuous adjustment of the fertility policy causes information gaps among departments at different levels, thus leading to coordination difficulties and a lack of responsibility between the upper and lower levels of policy implementation. Second, the implementation of the two-child policy is ineffective, and its incentive effect fails to meet the expected standard. Therefore, this paper explores the similarities and policy effectiveness of fertility policies and uses the LDA thematic clustering model, cosine similarity distance algorithm, and PMC index evaluation system to quantitatively analyze fertility policies in different periods. The results are as follows: (1) due to changes in China's demographic structure, China's fertility policy has adjusted significantly during the universal two-child period, and its policy content and specific measures have changed dramatically compared with those of the previous period, while China's fertility policy has stabilized during the universal three-child period. (2) In the policy effectiveness evaluation, most policies have undetailed long-, medium-, and short-term goals and lack adequate policy guarantees. Therefore, to build a perfect fertility support system, the government needs to comprehensively consider the synergy of policy measures, the strengthening of policy guarantee programs, and the enhancement of policy effectiveness in the formulation of relevant policies, to continuously make policies more targeted, scientific, and effective.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1-27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144561467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black-White disparities in viral susceptibility to the common cold: The role of depressive affect.","authors":"Lauren Manley, Michael McFarland","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487980","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487980","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evidence shows that there are marked Black-White health disparities in immune function that exist independent of socioeconomic status. Notably, most studies cannot differentiate between viral exposure and viral susceptibility. We overcome this problem with an experimental design and assess racial differences in cold symptom severity and the potential mediating role of depressive-type negative trait affect. We use data from the Pittsburg Cold Study 3, a viral challenge study where healthy participants (<i>n</i> = 200) were all inoculated with a cold virus. We test two hypotheses concerning race, depressive affect, and cold symptom severity using multivariable ordinary least squares regression and a Monte Carlo method for assessing mediation. While there was no significant difference in objective signs of upper respiratory pathology, findings indicate that Black participants reported less severe cold symptoms compared to White participants (<i>p</i> < 0.05). Depressive affect mediated this relationship: Black participants generally reported lower levels of depressive affect than White participants, which in turn was associated with lower perceived severity of their cold symptoms. We found evidence for racial differences in cold symptom severity in ways consistent with the Black-White Mental Health Paradox.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"82-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143774541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking fertility through Marx: Alienation and demographic change.","authors":"Hiroaki Matsuura","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2509335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2025.2509335","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":"70 2","pages":"65-66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144128799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Happiness in the sky: The effect of sunshine exposure on subjective well-being.","authors":"Shiwen Liu, Xin Zhang, Caiyi Zhao","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487977","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487977","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Compared to other environmental stressors, the impact of sun exposure on subjective well-being (SWB) remains inconclusive. This study investigates the effect of sunlight exposure on various SWB measures by matching a nationwide longitudinal survey in China with precise sunshine duration data based on the exact time and location of each interview. Exploiting variations in sunshine exposure experienced by the same individuals over 8 years, we find a positive relationship between sunshine duration on the interview day and life satisfaction, as well as a nonlinear relationship between past-week sunshine duration and depressive symptoms. Although sunshine has a significant effect on SWB, its overall magnitude is relatively small.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"67-81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143804431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracking of factors affecting Chinese women's fertility intentions from childhood to adulthood: Under birth-control policy shift.","authors":"Manyu Lan","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487982","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2487982","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>China experienced a rapid fertility decline in recent decades. Fertility intention as a strong predictor of actual behavior has attracted much attention. Yet, there is not much literature to analyze Chinese women's fertility intention from a life-course framework. This study attempts to shed light on the relationship between the formation of women's fertility concepts and their growth trajectory and highlights the policy effect on fertility intentions during the policy-shift process. Using data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) collected in 2014, 2016 and 2018, I tracked those factors affecting Chinese childbearing-age women's fertility intentions. The changes in women's intentions for a second child and for the ideal number of children were estimated by logistic regressions respectively, and propensity score matching (PSM) was used to test the robustness of results. Adult women's fertility intentions were associated with their childhood family background, and the sibsize effect on their fertility intentions was found to be significantly positive. Compared with socio-economic characteristics, the influence of their self-rated health (SRH) and subjective well-being (SWB) on fertility intention was more prominent. The policy effect on the changes in women's fertility intentions was confirmed. The intergenerational preference from parents to their daughters, or/and the intimate relationship among siblings may contribute to women's intentions for more children.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"94-116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143811962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The demographic transition as a consequence of alienation in the industrial societies.","authors":"Hippokratis Kiaris","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2497778","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2025.2497778","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"117-125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144005464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Benjamin R Doolittle, Katherine Carroll Britt, Ruby Lekwauwa, Joshua Sebu, Augustine Boateng
{"title":"The association of telomere length and religiosity: A systematic review.","authors":"Benjamin R Doolittle, Katherine Carroll Britt, Ruby Lekwauwa, Joshua Sebu, Augustine Boateng","doi":"10.1080/19485565.2024.2448946","DOIUrl":"10.1080/19485565.2024.2448946","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Religiosity is a complex construct comprised observance, intrinsic beliefs, meditative practice, and communal elements. Religiosity has been associated with reduced mortality and improved overall health, but understanding the underlying biological associations is evolving. As increased telomere length has been associated with increased longevity, this project presents a systematic review of studies investigating the relationship between religiosity and telomere length.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>The study protocol was registered prior to the search. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol was followed. Seven databases were employed using relevant criteria: PubMed, PSYCHinfo, CINAHL, ATLA, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 381 studies were identified and 46 studies met full screening. Eight studies met the final inclusion criteria. Of these eight studies, two showed no relationship between religiosity and telomere length, three showed a positive relationship, and three showed an equivocal or ambivalent relationship. Meta-analysis was not possible due to the heterogeneity of the studies.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Religiosity may be associated with telomere length, but results vary widely across the diverse studies included. Longitudinal studies with adequate sample size are needed to determine this association more rigorously.</p>","PeriodicalId":45428,"journal":{"name":"Biodemography and Social Biology","volume":" ","pages":"3-16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142933082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}