Demography of Health and Aging Seminar- Allison Stolte

US States and the Intergenerational Transmission of Health Disadvantage: How State Policy Contexts Contribute to Geographic Disparities in Birth Outcomes

    Date:  11/03/2022 (Thu)

    Time:  3:30pm- 5:00pm

    Location:  Seminar will be held on-site: Gross Hall 270

    Organizer:  Scott Lynch


Meeting Schedule: (Not currently open for scheduling. Please contact the seminar organizer listed above.)

    All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.

    3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)


    Additional Comments:  Burgeoning sociological research considers how state characteristics and policy-specific contexts shape health outcomes. Fundamental to this work is the understanding that states hold growing power to implement policies that redistribute health-relevant resources and provide health services. While many of these studies importantly focus on examining how single-issue policies and characteristics or unidimensional measures of state policy contexts (such as “liberalness” or “welfare generosity”) are independently associated with health outcomes, underlying policy contexts drive multiple aspects, or dimensions, of state’s socio-economic and political conditions that uniquely combine to shape downstream social determinants and, ultimately, health. In this presentation, I investigate how distinct, multidimensional policy contexts shape birth outcomes, which are predictors of later-life health and well-being and important measures of population health. Building on the World Health Organization’s theory of the structural determinants of health inequities, I use state-level data on six domains of socioeconomic and policy conditions to first identify three distinct profiles of US state policy contexts using latent profile analysis. These profiles provide a nuanced understanding of the contexts that drive states’ socioeconomic and political conditions. I then examine how these latent profiles of state policy contexts predict low birth weight and infant mortality, which allows me to identify unique dimensions of policy contexts that are protective of adverse birth outcomes. Throughout this presentation, I also acknowledge the importance of single-issue policy contexts and consider heterogeneous effects across maternal race and ethnicity, with the understanding that structural and interpersonal forms of discrimination may limit the protective effects of certain policy contexts for racially minoritized groups.