Category: Publications

Gender Differences in Associations Between Spousal Cognitive Decline and Marital Strain: Evidence from the US Older Couples by Meiyi Li, Yiang Li, and Michal Engelman (2025)

Social Science & Medicine Abstract: Despite extensive research demonstrating how marriage affects health, less is known about how health changes impact marriages, particularly when one spouse’s health declines. This study extends the stress process model to dyadic contexts to ask whether and how one spouse’s cognitive decline is associated with the other spouse’s perceived marital …

Inequality and Stratification in the Transitions from Socialism by Ted Gerber and Michael Zaslavsky (2025)

Book chapter in Oxford Handbook of Social Stratification Abstract: The transitions from state socialism to market economies in the late twentieth century represented a profound transformation in virtually all aspects of the economic and social lives of the populations who experienced it. This chapter summarizes the voluminous literature that has arisen since the onset of …

Steps toward an Ecology of Markets: Markets as Evolving Computational Algorithms by James Rosenberg (2025)

Sociological Theory Abstract: Approaches to the study of markets in economic sociology have been converging with an approach to markets found in the field of evolutionary economics. In this view, markets are treated as sets of rules that facilitate the exchange of goods and information. These rule sets can be modeled and formalized as evolving …

How Does Life Course Exposure to Contextual Disadvantage Accelerate Biological Aging? The Role of Psychological Symptoms by Christina Kamis, Wei Xu, Amy Schultz, Joseph Clark, Michal Engelman, and Kristen Malecki (2025)

The Journals of Gerontology Series B Abstract: Objectives Recent research has found that life course exposure to contextual socioeconomic disadvantage may accelerate biological aging, providing key insight into an upstream driver of health disparities. However, questions about the intervening mechanisms remain. We examine the role of psychological symptoms in the direct and indirect relationships between …

“Nobody’s Children”: The Racial History of Parental Rights Law in Foster Care by Michaela Simmons (2025)

Gender & Society Abstract: While scholars show that child protection is tied to the regulation of motherhood, we know little about how mothers of color were treated in early child welfare history. To address this gap, this article traces how racial logics of maternal unfitness emerged in foster care services and shaped parental rights. Using …

Decriminalizing or reassembling schools? Implications of removing police from schools for racial and ethnic disparities in criminal justice system contact by Catalina Valdez, Benjamin W Fisher, and Abigail J Beneke (2025)

Social Problems Abstract: Calls to remove school-based law enforcement (SBLE) have grown in tandem with widespread SBLE presence. Central to these calls are issues of equity, with the hope that removing SBLE will reduce racial/ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. However, little research has examined the extent to which removing SBLE shapes outcomes related …

Dementia prevalence in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (2025)

Alzheimer’s & Dementia Abstract: Introduction While there is growing appreciation of the importance of sociobiological determinants of dementia, few lifespan cohorts offer well‐characterized dementia outcomes to explore these aims. We sought to identify dementia prevalence in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), one of the most comprehensive lifespan cohort studies in the United States. Highlights We …

The Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the United States and Deaths of Despair: Trends From 1979 to 2022 by Christine Schwartz and Rodrigo González-Velastín (2025)

Population and Development Review Abstract: The extent to which women outlive men in the United States has fluctuated over the 20th century, with periods of equalization, stagnation, and increase. Women’s life expectancy advantage declined for roughly four decades but resurged after 2012. This coincided with an increase in deaths of despair (deaths due to suicide, …

Division of Labor, Multiplication of Gratitude? Gratitude and Resentment Within Households by Allison Daminger, Amanda Nerenberg, Rachel Drapper, Alexandra C. Feldberg, and Kathleen L. McGinn (2025)

Journal of Marriage and Family Abstract: Objective This paper investigates contemporary household economies of gratitude and resentment, assessing how discrepancies between partners’ expectations relate to their emotions and household labor allocation. Background Women shoulder greater shares of cognitive and physical housework than men. Prior research suggests expressions of gratitude reveal the underlying expectations that reproduce …

The Social Psychology of Social Class and Mobility by Jessica Calarco and Chloe Rosenstock (2025)

Handbook of Social Psychology Vol. 2: Meso and Macro Perspectives Abstract: Compared to other social scientists, social psychologists have been less involved in efforts to explain patterns of social class reproduction and social class mobility, and when they have these considered these questions, they have historically tended to adopt deficit-oriented perspectives that normalize existing inequalities. …