Research

Dissertation

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: The older sibling: Child survival following parental death

There are various ways siblings can influence the survival of infants and children. Compact birth-spacing increases infant mortality risk due to infectious disease and maternal depletion whereas competition for emotional and material resources between siblings affect survival. In contrast, I argue that older siblings can have a protective role in the case of parental bereavement in childhood. Gender roles play an active role in how outcomes are expected to differ. Maternal absence is more detrimental to child survival than parental absence, but gender roles of siblings also matter. Older brothers take on the bread-winner role whereas sisters are more likely to step into the maternal role, and these traditional roles create a differential response to maternal and paternal loss. The presence of a brother, too young to work, could be detrimental in the case of paternal loss whereas an older brother could be a source of income. An income from an older sister is less attainable, but an older sister can take on the maternal caregiving role. I expect to find that the presence of older sisters buffers the impact of maternal loss whereas the presence of older brothers is expected to be less of a buffer. While younger siblings should not decrease mortality risk, intensified resource competition combined with parental emotional stress and material deprivation could aggravate the probability of surviving. In the case of paternal death, I argue that the presence of older brothers will mitigate the impact more so than the presence of older sisters. Again, closely spaced siblings are expected to increase mortality risk.



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. 


Work in progress