Research

Paper 1: Surviving the great divide: The differential buffering effect of social capital on parental loss in the era of migration (Manuscript available on request)

Although adversities in early childhood are associated with excess child mortality and adverse health outcomes, there has been limited research on mitigating conditions that can attenuate the adverse health impacts. This study examines a particular adversity: the loss of a parent during early childhood, emphasizing the crucial role mothers play in survival. It highlights how social capital can buffer the negative impact of paternal loss to a greater extent than maternal loss on child survival in the United States between 1850 and 1950.
I use data from the genealogical database Familinx, matched to county-level geographical information to create indicators of community social capital and account for the role of family environment by conducting both sibling and cousins fixed effect models. The results show a significant gap in the magnitude of excess child mortality risk depending on whether the loss is paternal or maternal. While the effect of maternal bereavement (11%) is over twice as large as paternal bereavement (4%), social capital mainly buffers in the latter case. Independent of model specification, in high social capital contexts, the increased mortality risk following paternal loss is fully mitigated whereas the buffering effect of social capital is diluted in the case of maternal loss.

Paper 2: Kin support and child mortality in the US (Manuscript available on request)

This study examines the essential roles of grandmothers and older siblings in influencing child survival. Grandmothers provide vital support through caregiving, nutrition, and reducing the demands on parents, which enhances child survival rates in both historical and modern contexts. The analysis also explores the role of older siblings, revealing that their impact on child mortality varies by gender, with older sisters potentially offering more protective benefits than older brothers. Using Familinx, a crowdsourced genealogical dataset, I investigate these dynamics within the historical context of the United States. The results indicate that maternal grandmothers are consistently associated with lower child mortality rates, with some evidence suggesting a similar effect from maternal grandfathers. In contrast, the presence of older siblings does not appear to protect against mortality; rather, having more siblings—whether older or younger—is linked to higher mortality rates. Furthermore, the analysis of buffering mechanisms reveals that maternal grandmothers mitigate the effects of a mother’s loss, while older siblings mainly buffer child mortality after infancy.

Paper 3: Bereavement effects in the past and social support (w/ Alberto Palloni)

We use a unique data set to assess the effects on mortality risks of individuals in intact couples and those to which are exposed the surviving member after the death of the spouse. The study of spousal bereavement effects on mortality risks has a long history but, as far as we know, there has never been an assessment of how these effects change over time and by birth cohorts. We use a unique geneaological dataset, Familinx, which is constructed by extracting family pedigrees from Geni.com (Kaplanis et al., 2018). This dataset provides valuable information about family characteristics, kinship ties, individuals’ lifespan, and residential location. To estimate bereavement effects, we use multistate hazard models and assess changes in the magnitude of those effects over time by focusing on the experience of marriage cohorts between 1750 to 1930 while keeping adequate representation. We also use aggregate measures of access to churches and neighborhood ethnicity to test the hypothesis that bereavement effects are considerably attenuated by a widow(er) social capital or social support. 

• Lund, M. B., Muñoz, I. & Palloni, A. Cognitive development: Parental investments or grandparental care? A Young Lives study

• Suarez Vergne, A., Cebolla-Boado, H., Lund, M. B., & Serrano Sanguilinda, I. The Tipping Point of Intolerance: Far-Right Elections and Terrorist Attacks as Catalysts for Anti-Muslim Hate Crime in Europe

• Muñoz, I. Lund, M. B., Sørensen, T., Palloni, A. The Weight of Opportunity: County-Level Links between Income Mobility, Obesity, and Mortality in the US