Where Does the Black-White Life Expectancy Gap Come From? The Deadly Consequences of Residential Segregation.

The disparity in life expectancy between white and black Americans exceeds five years for men and three years for women. While prior research has investigated the roles of healthcare, health behaviors, biological risk, socioeconomic status, and life course effects on black mortality, the literature on the geographic origins of the gap is more limited. This study examines how the black-white life expectancy gap varies across counties and how much of the national gap is attributable to within-county racial inequality versus differences between counties.

Inequalities in life expectancy and cardiometabolic disease mortality across and within high-income countries.

Cardiometabolic disease is a leading cause of death and plays a key role in recent life expectancy trends worldwide. We highlight inequalities in cardiometabolic disease mortality across sex, race/ethnicity, geographic region, and urbanicity within the United States, as well as across high-income countries.

Estimation of confidence intervals for decompositions and other complex demographic estimators.

Background: While the use of standard errors and confidence intervals is common in regression-based studies in the population sciences, it is far less common in studies using formal demographic measures and methods, including demographic decompositions.

Objective: This article describes and provides explicit instructions for using four different approaches for computing standard errors for complex demographic estimators.

Methods: Standard errors for Arriaga's decomposition of life expectancy differences are computed using the delta method, the Poisson bootstrap, the binomial bootstrap, and the Monte Carlo approaches.

Smoking and the widening inequality in life expectancy between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas of the United States.

Background: Geographic inequality in US mortality has increased rapidly over the last 25 years, particularly between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. These gaps are sizeable and rival life expectancy differences between the US and other high-income countries. This study determines the contribution of smoking, a key contributor to premature mortality in the US, to geographic inequality in mortality over the past quarter century.

Immigration and improvements in American life expectancy.

Despite the immigrant mortality advantage and the increasing share of the population born abroad, relatively little is known about how immigration has impacted trends in US life expectancy. How immigrants contribute to national life expectancy trends is of increasing interest, particularly in the context of an unprecedented stagnation in American mortality. We find that immigration increases US life expectancy by 1.

The implications of changing education distributions for life expectancy gradients.

Recent research has proposed that shifting education distributions across cohorts are influencing estimates of educational gradients in mortality. We use data from the United States and Finland covering four decades to explore this assertion. We base our analysis around our new finding: a negative logarithmic relationship between relative education and relative mortality.

Rising geographic inequality in mortality in the United States.

Objectives: To examine trends in inequality in life expectancy and age-specific death rates across 40 US spatial units from 1990 to 2016.

Methods: We use multiple cause-of-death data from vital statistics to estimate measures of inequality in mortality across metropolitan status and geographic region. We consider trends for 5-year age intervals and examine inequality in cause-specific mortality.

Proximate Sources of Change in Trajectories of First Marriage in the United States, 1960-2010.

This study examines proximate sources of change in first-marriage trajectories in the United States between 1960 and 2010. This was a period of tremendous social change: divorce became more common, people started marrying later or not marrying at all, innovations in medicine and changes in social and behavioral factors led to reduced mortality, inequality grew stronger and was reflected by more intense assortative mating, and the country underwent a massive educational expansion. Each of these factors influenced the formation and dissolution of first marriages over this period.

Recent trends in life expectancy across high income countries: retrospective observational study.

Objectives: To assess whether declines in life expectancy occurred across high income countries during 2014-16, to identify the causes of death contributing to these declines, and to examine the extent to which these declines were driven by shared or differing factors across countries.

Design: Demographic analysis using aggregated data.

Setting: Vital statistics systems of 18 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Globalization and Contemporary Fertility Convergence.

The rise of the global network of nation-states has precipitated social transformations throughout the world. This article examines the role of political and economic globalization in driving fertility convergence across countries between 1965 and 2009. While past research has typically conceptualized fertility change as a country-level process, this study instead employs a theoretical and methodological framework that examines differences in fertility between pairs of countries over time.

Trends in Education-Specific Life Expectancy, Data Quality, and Shifting Education Distributions: A Note on Recent Research.

Several recent articles have reported conflicting conclusions about educational differences in life expectancy, and this is partly due to the use of unreliable data subject to a numerator-denominator bias previously reported as ranging from 20 % to 40 %. This article presents estimates of life expectancy and lifespan variation by education in the United States using more reliable data from the National Health Interview Survey. Contrary to prior conclusions in the literature, I find that life expectancy increased or stagnated since 1990 among all education-race-sex groups except for non-Hispanic white women with less than a high school education; there has been a robust increase in life expectancy among white high school graduates and a smaller increase among black female high school graduates; lifespan variation did not increase appreciably among high school graduates; and lifespan variation plays a very limited role in explaining educational gradients in mortality.

Trends in U.S. life expectancy gradients: the role of changing educational composition.

Background: I examined age patterns and the role of shifting educational distributions in driving trends in educational gradients in life expectancy among non-Hispanic Whites between 1991 and 2005.

Methods: Data were from the 1986-2004 National Health Interview Survey with mortality follow-up through 2006. Life expectancies were computed by sex, period and education.

Health among Black children by maternal and child nativity.

Objectives: We examined 5 health outcomes among Black children born to US-born and foreign-born mothers and whether differences by mother's region of birth could be explained by maternal duration of US residence, child's place of birth, and familial sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods: Data were from the 2000-2011 National Health Interview Surveys. We examined 3 groups of children, based on mother's region of birth: US origin, African origin, and Latin American or Caribbean origin.

IS THERE CONVERGENCE ACROSS COUNTRIES? A SPATIAL APPROACH.

We analyze convergence across countries over the last half century as a result of globalizing forces. Drawing on theories of modernization, dependency, the world-system, political trade blocs, and the world-society, we consider economic, demographic, knowledge, financial, and political dimensions of convergence. Using a new methodology, we calculate the minimum volume ellipsoid encompassing different groupings of countries, finding that during the 1960-2009 period, countries have not evolved significantly closer or similar to one another, although groups of countries based on their core-periphery status or membership in trade blocs exhibit increasing internal convergence and divergence between one another.