{"title":"\"I Love You to Death\": Social Networks and the Widowhood Effect on Mortality.","authors":"Benjamin Cornwell, Tianyao Qu","doi":"10.1177/00221465231175685","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465231175685","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on \"the widowhood effect\" shows that mortality rates are greater among people who have recently lost a spouse. There are several medical and psychological explanations for this (e.g., \"broken heart syndrome\") and sociological explanations that focus on spouses' shared social-environmental exposures. We expand on sociological perspectives by arguing that couples' social connections <i>to others</i> play a role in this phenomenon. Using panel data on 1,169 older adults from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we find that mortality is associated with how well embedded one's spouse is in one's own social network. The widowhood effect is greater among those whose spouses were <i>not</i> well connected to one's other network members. We speculate that the loss of a less highly embedded spouse signals the loss of unique, valuable, nonredundant social resources from one's network. We discuss theoretical interpretations, alternative explanations, limitations, and directions for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"273-291"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9692610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sleep Duration Differences by Education from Middle to Older Adulthood: Does Employment Stratification Contribute to Gendered Leveling?","authors":"Jess M Meyer","doi":"10.1177/00221465231199281","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465231199281","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sleep duration changes across the life course and differs by education in the United States. However, little research has examined whether educational differences in sleep duration change over age-or whether sleep duration trajectories over age differ by education. This study uses a life course approach to analyze American Time Use Survey data (N = 60,908), examining how educational differences in weekday sleep duration change from middle to older adulthood (ages 40-79). For men only, differences in total sleep time between individuals with less than a high school degree and those with more education converge in older adulthood. Results suggest that this leveling is explained by decreasing educational stratification in work hours as men enter older adulthood. Findings highlight the importance of employment for shaping gendered socioeconomic differences in sleep and demonstrate differences by education in how sleep duration changes over age, with possible implications for health disparities.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"182-199"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11014895/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41219802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xiaowen Han, Tom VanHeuvelen, Jeylan T Mortimer, Zachary Parolin
{"title":"Cumulative Unionization and Physical Health Disparities among Older Adults.","authors":"Xiaowen Han, Tom VanHeuvelen, Jeylan T Mortimer, Zachary Parolin","doi":"10.1177/00221465231205266","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465231205266","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Whereas previous research shows that union membership is associated with improved health, static measurements have been used to test dynamic theories linking the two. We construct a novel measure of cumulative unionization, tracking individuals across their entire careers, to examine health consequences in older adulthood. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1970-2019) and predict self-rated health, functional limitations, and chronic health conditions in ages 60 to 79 using cumulative unionization measured during respondents' careers. Results from growth models show that unionized careers are associated with .25 SD to .30 SD improvements in health among older adults across all measures. Analyses of life course mechanisms reveal heterogeneous effects across unionization timing, age in older adulthood, and birth cohort. Moreover, subgroup analyses reveal unionization to partially, but not fully, ameliorate disparities based on privileged social positions. Our findings reveal a substantial and novel mechanism driving older adulthood health disparities.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"162-181"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71415229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xiaowen Han, Tom VanHeuvelen, Jeylan T Mortimer, Zachary Parolin
{"title":"Policy Brief.","authors":"Xiaowen Han, Tom VanHeuvelen, Jeylan T Mortimer, Zachary Parolin","doi":"10.1177/00221465241248972","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465241248972","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"161"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140877925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"High-Stakes Treatment Negotiations Gone Awry: The Importance of Interactions for Understanding Treatment Advocacy and Patient Resistance.","authors":"Alexandra Tate, Karen Lutfey Spencer","doi":"10.1177/00221465231204354","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465231204354","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Doctors (and sociologists) have a long history of struggling to understand why patients seek medical help yet resist treatment recommendations. Explanations for resistance have pointed to macrostructural changes, such as the rise of the engaged patient or decline of physician authority. Rather than assuming that concepts such as resistance, authority, or engagement are exogenous phenomena transmitted via conversational conduits, we examine how they are dynamically co-constituted interactionally. Using conversation analysis to analyze a videotaped interaction of an oncology patient resisting the treatment recommendation even though she might die without treatment, we show how sustained resistance manifests in and through her doctor's actions. This paradox, in which the doctor can both recommend life-prolonging care and condition resistance to it, has broad relevance beyond cancer treatment; it also can help us to understand other doctor-patient decisional conflicts, for instance, medication nonadherence, delaying emergent care, and vaccine refusal.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"237-255"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11058117/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71415231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whose Good Death? Valuation and Standardization as Mechanisms of Inequality in Hospitals.","authors":"Katrina E Hauschildt","doi":"10.1177/00221465221143088","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465221143088","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although most clinicians have come to perceive invasive life-sustaining treatments as overly aggressive at the end of life, some of the public and greater proportions of some socially disadvantaged groups have not. Drawing on 1,500+ hours of observation in four intensive care units and 69 interviews with physicians and patients' family members, I find inequality occurs through two mechanisms complementary to the cultural health capital and fundamental causes explanations prevalent in existing health disparities literature: in valuation, as the attitudes and values of the socially disadvantaged are challenged and ignored, and in standardization, as the outcomes preferred by less advantaged groups are defined as inappropriate and made harder to obtain by the informal and formal practices and policies of racialized organizations. I argue inequality is produced in part because wealthier and White elites shape institutional preferences and practices and, therefore, institutions and clinical standards to reflect their cultural tastes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"221-236"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10267289/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9632936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transitory or Chronic? Gendered Loneliness Trajectories over Widowhood and Separation in Older Age.","authors":"Nicole Kapelle, Christiaan Monden","doi":"10.1177/00221465231223719","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00221465231223719","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We investigate how loneliness develops over the marital dissolution process in older age (i.e., transition at or after age 50) while paying close attention to heterogeneities by the dissolution pathway-widowhood and separation-and gender. Using data from over 8,000 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey respondents, we assess the association of interest using fixed effects regressions. Findings indicate that loneliness increased in the year before widowhood or separation among both women and men. Levels spiked in the year of dissolution, particularly for widowhood but less for separation. Widowed men were substantially more affected than widowed women, and gender differences were negligible for separation. Although loneliness levels gradually declined, widowed men remained vulnerable for remarkably long periods. Such chronic loneliness might be linked to other health disadvantages. These findings highlight the importance of long-term and gender-specific approaches to social support and integration after marital dissolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"292-308"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11144354/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139571967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erin Manalo-Pedro, Laura E. Enriquez, Jennifer R. Nájera, Annie Ro
{"title":"Anxious Activists? Examining Immigration Policy Threat, Political Engagement, and Anxiety among College Students with Different Self/Parental Immigration Statuses","authors":"Erin Manalo-Pedro, Laura E. Enriquez, Jennifer R. Nájera, Annie Ro","doi":"10.1177/00221465241247541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465241247541","url":null,"abstract":"Restrictive immigration policies harm the mental health of undocumented immigrants and their U.S. citizen family members. As a sociopolitical stressor, threat to family due to immigration policy can heighten anxiety, yet it is unclear whether political engagement helps immigrant-origin students to cope. We used a cross-sectional survey of college students from immigrant families (N = 2,511) to investigate whether anxiety symptomatology was associated with perceived threat to family and if political engagement moderated this relationship. We stratified analyses by self/parental immigration statuses—undocumented students, U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, and U.S. citizens with lawfully present parents—to examine family members’ legal vulnerability. Family threat was significantly associated with anxiety; higher levels of political engagement reduced the strength of this relationship. However, this moderation effect was significant only for U.S. citizens with lawfully present parents. These findings emphasize the importance of the family immigration context in shaping individuals’ mental health outcomes.","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":"101 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140820020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Intergenerational Transmission of Health Disadvantage: Can Education Disrupt It?","authors":"Emily Smith-Greenaway, Yingyi Lin, Abigail Weitzman","doi":"10.1177/00221465241246250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465241246250","url":null,"abstract":"In low-income countries, intergenerational processes can culminate in the replication of extreme forms of health disadvantage between mothers and adult daughters, including experiencing a young child’s death. The preventable nature of most child deaths raises questions of whether social resources can protect women from enduring this adversity like their mothers. This study examined whether education—widely touted as a vehicle for social mobility in resource-poor countries—disrupts the intergenerational cycle of maternal bereavement. We estimated multilevel discrete-time survival models of women’s hazard of child loss using Demographic and Health Survey Program data (N = 195,744 women in 345 subnational regions in 32 African countries). Women’s educational attainment minimizes the salience of their mothers’ bereavement history for their own probability of child loss; however, mothers’ background becomes irrelevant only among women with ≥10 years of schooling. Education’s neutralizing influence is most prominent in the highest mortality-burdened communities.","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140808523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mothering While Sick: Poor Maternal Health and the Educational Attainment of Young Adults","authors":"Shannon Cavanagh, Athena Owirodu, Lindsay Bing","doi":"10.1177/00221465241247538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465241247538","url":null,"abstract":"At a time when educational attainment in young adulthood forecasts long-term trajectories of economic mobility, better health, and stable partnership, there is more pressure on mothers to provide labor and support to advance their children’s interests in the K–12 system. As a result, poor health among mothers when children are growing up may interfere with how far they progress educationally. Applying life course theory to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate this possibility, we found that young adults were less likely to graduate from college when raised by mothers in poor health, especially when those mothers had a college degree themselves. Young people’s school-related behaviors mediated this longitudinal association. These findings extend the literature on the connection between education and health into an intergenerational process, speaking to a pressing public health issue—rising morbidity among adults in midlife—and the reproduction of inequality within families.","PeriodicalId":51349,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140820030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}