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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (18 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UCLA Previously Published Works (2017)
Social inequalities in health and disability are often attributed to differences in childhood adversity, access to care, health behavior, residential environments, stress, and the psychosocial aspects of work environments. Yet, disadvantaged people are also more likely to hold jobs requiring heavy physical labor, repetitive movement, ergonomic strain, and safety hazards. We investigate the role of physical work conditions in contributing to social inequality in mobility among older adults in Mexico, using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Survey (MHAS) and an innovative statistical modeling approach. We use data on categories of primary adult occupation to serve as proxies for jobs with more or less demanding physical work requirements. Our results show that more physically demanding jobs are associated with mobility limitations at older ages, even when we control for age and sex. Inclusion of job categories attenuates the effects of education and wealth on mobility limitations, suggesting that physical work conditions account for at least part of the socioeconomic differentials in mobility limitations in Mexico.
    Cover page: Links between Primary Occupation and Functional Limitations among Older Adults in Mexico.
    • Article
    On-Line Working Paper Series (2000)

    This paper uses the 1995 Guatemalan Survey of Family Health (EGSF) to analyze the relationship between child illness and health seeking behavior. The EGSF contains detailed calendar data on the nature and timing of illness and treatment behavior for children age five and below; extensive information about the characteristics of mothers, families and communities; and data on the accessibility of traditional and biomedical providers within and near the community. The analysis is based on 870 children who began a diarrheal or respiratory illness during a two-week period prior to interview. Estimates are derived from a multinomial model of the probability of seeing a specific type of provider on a given day of illness, as a function of characteristics of the illness, child, mother, and community. The results indicate that modern medical care plays a major role in the treatment of infectious illness among children in rural Guatemala. The symptoms associated with the illness, their perceived severity, and mother's beliefs about their causes are important determinants of whether a child is brought to a provider and the type of provider visited. Poverty is a serious constraint on a family's choices about how to treat children's illnesses, whereas education and ethnicity have little effect on treatment behavior when income is held constant. In addition, the availability of modern health facilities within the community – both government-sponsored facilities and private doctors – has a substantial impact on the type of providers sought to treat children's illnesses.

      Cover page: Choices about Treatment for ARI and Diarrhea in Rural Guatemala
      • Article
      On-Line Working Paper Series (2002)

      The Guatemalan Indigenous population is engaged in a process of ethnic reorganization that closely parallels that of contemporary American Indians. We investigate the consequences of this process on the use of two key ethnic boundary markers for women -- dress and language use – using data from a 1995 social survey. The results show that social isolation and education are key factors in knowledge and use of Indigenous languages. By contrast, use of Indigenous dress does not vary substantially based on individual characteristics. Use of Indigenous dress, but not language, may reflect a pragmatic accommodation to social change.

        Cover page: Isolation, Integration, and Ethnic Boundaries in Rural Guatemala
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UCLA Previously Published Works (2023)
        This study examines changes in the sociodemographic patterns of deportation and voluntary return of undocumented immigrants from the United States to Mexico during three US presidential administrations (2001 to 2019) with different immigration policies. Most previous studies examining these migration flows for the United States as a whole have relied exclusively on counts of deportees and returnees, thereby ignoring changes over the past 20 y in the characteristics of the undocumented population itself, i.e., the population at risk of deportation or voluntary return. We estimate Poisson models based on two data sources that permit us to compare changes in the sex, age, education, and marital status distributions of both deportees and voluntary return migrants with the corresponding changes in the undocumented population during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations: the Migration Survey on the Borders of Mexico-North (Encuesta sobre Migración en las Fronteras de México-Norte) for counts of deportees and voluntary return migrants and the Current Population Surveys Annual Social and Economic Supplement for estimated counts of the undocumented population living in the United States. We find that whereas disparities by sociodemographic characteristics in the likelihood of deportation generally increased beginning in Obamas first term, sociodemographic disparities in the likelihood of voluntary return generally decreased over this period. Despite heightened antiimmigrant rhetoric during the Trump administration, the changes in deportation and voluntary return migration to Mexico among the undocumented during Trumps term were part of a trend that began early in the Obama administration.
          Cover page: Deportations and departures: Undocumented Mexican immigrants return migration during three presidential administrations.
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2014)
          The death of a child is one of the most traumatic events that a parent can experience. The psychological and physical consequences of bereavement are well established, and the consequences are more severe for mothers than fathers. However, little is known about how the death of an adult child affects parental wellbeing in old age or how the deceased child's sex may moderate the association. We use data from the Taiwanese Longitudinal Study of Aging (TLSA) to investigate how the death of a son or a daughter differentially affects the wellbeing of older parents, measured by depressive symptoms and self-rated health. We find that for mothers, a son's death is associated with an increase in depressive symptoms and a decline in self-rated health, but fathers' health is not adversely affected by a son's death. There is little evidence that a daughter's death has a negative effect on either maternal or paternal wellbeing. We situate these findings within their social and cultural contexts and discuss social policies that would reduce gender and health inequality.
            Cover page: Death of a child and parental wellbeing in old age: Evidence from Taiwan
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UCLA Previously Published Works (2015)
            We use data from three rounds of the Mexican Family Life Survey to examine whether migrants in the United States returning to Mexico in the period 2005-2012 have worse health than those remaining in the United States. Despite extensive interest by demographers in health-related selection, this has been a neglected area of study in the literature on U.S.-Mexico migration, and the few results to date have been contradictory and inconclusive. Using five self-reported health variables collected while migrants resided in the United States and subsequent migration history, we find direct evidence of higher probabilities of return migration for Mexican migrants in poor health as well as lower probabilities of return for migrants with improving health. These findings are robust to the inclusion of potential confounders reflecting the migrants' demographic characteristics, economic situation, family ties, and origin and destination characteristics. We anticipate that in the coming decade, health may become an even more salient issue in migrants' decisions about returning to Mexico, given the recent expansion in access to health insurance in Mexico.
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2017)
              Using five waves of the Taiwanese Longitudinal Study of Aging (1996-2011), we investigate (1) the association between family members' education and the age trajectories of individuals' depressive symptoms and (2) gender differences in those relationships. Our examination is guided by several theoretical frameworks, including social capital, social control, age as leveler, and resource substitution. Nested models show that having a more educated father is associated with lower depressive symptoms, but the relationship disappears after controlling for respondent's education. Including spouse's education attenuates the coefficient for respondent's education. A similar pattern appears when children's education is added to the model. Among all the family members, children's education has the strongest association with depressive symptoms, with a similar magnitude for both genders, although its strength gradually weakens as respondents age. Our findings suggest the importance of the transfer of resources from children to parents and how it may affect mental health at older ages.
                Cover page: Children’s Education and Parents’ Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms
                • Article
                On-Line Working Paper Series (2008)

                Large numbers of foreign-born residents in the United States mean that many people receive at least part of their education abroad. Despite this fact, our understanding of nativity differences in the success of adults and their children is based on research that does not empirically consider variation in the benefits to schooling depending on where it is received. We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS) to examine: a) whether the socioeconomic and cognitive returns to education depend on whether it is received in the U.S. or abroad; and b) whether schooling location partially accounts for nativity differences in these returns. We find that the returns to schooling are generally largest for adults who receive at least some of their highest level of education in the U.S. The beneficial effects of U.S. schooling are generally more pronounced at higher levels of educational attainment. Schooling location accounts for a sizeable fraction of the lower socioeconomic and cognitive returns of the foreign-born, relative to natives; some meaningful differences remain, however. In addition, the higher cognitive skills of the children of foreign-born adults remain unexplained. Although we cannot distinguish among the possible pathways underlying these associations (e.g., school quality, transferability of credentials, the timing of immigration) our findings suggest the importance of considering factors related to schooling location as predictors of socioeconomic and cognitive success in the United States

                  Cover page: Schooling Location and Economic, Occupational and Cognitive Success among Immigrants and Their Children: the Case of Los Angeles
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2014)

                  Objective

                  The death or illness of a spouse negatively affects a partner's health, but little is known about the effect on blood glucose (glycemic) levels. This study investigates the extent to which a spouse's declining health or death is associated with changes in the glycemic levels of older adults.

                  Method

                  Data come from a nationally representative longitudinal sample of 597 Taiwanese (aged 54 to 90). We use changes in spousal health and death of a spouse to predict changes in glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels over a 6-year period.

                  Results

                  A decline in spousal health is associated with increased HbA1c levels for women, but not for men. The death of a healthy spouse is associated with increased HbA1c levels for both genders.

                  Discussion

                  Stressful life transitions may compromise the glycemic levels of older adults. Taking on a caregiving role may erode some of the benefits of marriage and interfere with women's maintenance of their own health.
                    Cover page: Increases in Blood Glucose in Older Adults
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UCLA Previously Published Works (2013)
                    In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in understanding the role of social and physical contexts in influencing health behaviors and outcomes. This is especially true for weight, which is considered to be highly dependent on environmental factors. The evidence linking neighborhood characteristics to weight in the United States, however, is mixed. Many studies in this area are hampered by cross sectional designs and a limited scope, insofar as they investigate only one dimension of neighborhood context. It is also unclear to what extent neighborhood characteristics account for racial/ethnic disparities in weight. Using longitudinal data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS), we compare patterns of weight change between Hispanics and other racial and ethnic groups in order to evaluate whether we observe a pattern of unhealthy assimilation in weight among Hispanic immigrants and to identify differences in the rate at which different groups gain weight over time. We also explore the extent to which patterns of weight change are related to a wider range of community characteristics. We find that weight increases across all groups between the two study waves of L.A. FANS and that the increases are significant except for Asians/Pacific Islanders. With respect to differences in the pace of weight change, second and higher generation Hispanic women and black men gain weight more rapidly than their first generation Hispanic counterparts. Although the evidence presented indicates that first generation Hispanics gain weight, we do not find evidence for convergence in weight since the U.S.-born gain weight at a more rapid rate. The inclusion of community-level variables does not alter the relationships between the race, ethnicity, and immigrant generation categories and weight change. Of the six types of community characteristics considered, only collective efficacy is consistently and significantly associated with weight change, although the protective effect of neighborhood collective efficacy is seen only among women.
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