Social Science & Medicine

Neighborhoods play a critical role in cognitive health risk and resilience, particularly as most older adults prefer to age in place. Research on this topic has largely focused on neighborhood socioeconomic indicators and a limited set of physical features such as green space and walkability. Broader neighborhood amenities, services, and built infrastructure that can support cognitive stimulation…

The study shows that despite legislative reform, disability-related earnings penalties have persisted and, in some cases, worsened. Moreover, gender disparities in earnings remain intrinsic, irrespective of an individual's disability status.

This paper uncovers how LGBTIQA+ service users navigate fertility clinics in the UK whilst under conditions of reproductive bioprecarity. By conducting 36 interviews with 54 fertility service users and providers, we identify four types of reproductive labor (intimate, emotional, decisional, and auto-didactic), which are used to manage structural and clinical inequalities. We contribute to existin…

Populations worldwide are aging, intensifying the challenge of meeting long-term care (LTC) needs. While formal LTC programs aim to address this demand, less is known about how they interact with informal caregiving and affect caregiver health and labor outcomes. This paper exploits the staggered expansion of Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waivers across U.S. states to examine …

Beyond sociodemographic disparities, difference from the majority population may manifest through both direct and indirect forms of discrimination. Migration-related barriers may further restrict access to health services, deepening inequalities. Our findings highlight consistent disparities among health service users and underscore the need for equity driven initiatives, including anti-racism tr…

Black caregivers of autistic children encounter numerous barriers to accessing diagnoses and services, leading to adverse outcomes due to delayed diagnosis and limited access to services. The presence of stigma within the Black community, combined with interpersonal and institutional racism, may contribute to these ongoing inequalities; however, few studies address these forms of discrimination t…

Reducing SHS exposure in social housing would deliver substantial health benefits, with a large share resulting from preventing smoke drift in multi-unit housing. Better data on population dynamics and smoke infiltration would strengthen estimates and support policy design.

This study investigates whether long-term changes in neighborhood racial and ethnic diversity are associated with adult diabetes prevalence across the contiguous United States. We calculated diversity indexes for US census tracts (n = 72,033) using decennial census data from 1990 to 2020. Five diversity trajectory clusters were identified using K-means clustering. Diabetes prevalence in 2019 was …

Restrictive school phone policies are expected to positively influence adolescent in-school phone use and improve pupil wellbeing. However, there is a lack of research that explains how school phone policies impact on phone use and wellbeing. This qualitative comparative case study aimed to provide such explanatory data. Data were collected from 40 focus group interviews in 7 case study secondary…

This study examines the distribution of emotional labor demands across occupations, genders, and employment arrangements in Europe, and investigates the mechanisms through which emotional labor demands are associated with mental health outcomes. Using data from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey (N = 43,850), we construct an Emotional Labor Demands Index and test hypotheses derived from …

The quality of institutions is widely recognized as a key determinant of public sector performance across various levels of governance. This paper investigates how institutional quality shaped the resilience of Italian Labour Market Areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we introduce a localized, non-parametric Interrupted Time Series (ITS) approach, using long-run mortality data (2004-…