health

Originally posted March 12, 2016.

Last week, a civil judge ruled that singer Kesha must fulfill her music contract despite allegations that her producer sexually assaulted her. While Kesha received an outpouring of support from fellow artists and fans creating the hashtag #FreeKesha, entertainment show host Wendy Williams critiqued the singer for not disclosing the “alleged” rape earlier. The media frequently questions the credibility of women like Kesha and the accusers of famous men like Mike Tyson and Bill Cosby because their stories deviate from what are perceived as “real rape” experiences (those committed by strangers and with a deadly weapon). Social science research helps us sort out how and why institutions risk “revictimizing” survivors as they navigate the criminal justice process.

The majority of victims do not report assaults to police, often because they don’t think they’ll be believed. Unsurprisingly, the cases most reported to police are those perpetrated by strangers and/or involving a weapon—what victims (and police) believe best constitute criminal, “authentic rapes.” Further, police treat victims perceived as “professional” as more credible than prostitutes.

• Bonnie S. Fischer, Leah E. Daigle, Francis T. Cullen, and Michael G. Turner. 2003. “Reporting Sexual Victimization to the Police and Others,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 30(1): 6-38.
• Amy Dellinger Page. 2008. “Judging Women and Defining Crime: Police Officers’ Attitudes Toward Women and Rape,” Sociological Spectrum 28(4): 389-411.

Victims can also be revictimized if they opt to undergo a physical examination. Forensic nurse examiners often prioritize the preservation of forensic evidence while unintentionally neglecting the emotional care of the victim in service to the criminal investigation.

• Sameena Mulla. 2014. The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention. New York: New York University Press.

The court process is distinctly difficult for victims, too. They must attempt to satisfy the expectations of prosecutors and withstand cross-examination by defense attorneys. Prosecutors may prepare victims for testimony by encouraging them to use certain vocabulary, dress in a way that suggests they did not “ask for it,” and show emotion to convey the specific feelings expected of a rape survivor. Despite rape shield laws that prohibit attorneys from disclosing a victim’s sexual history, defense attorneys may still question the victim’s morality, interrupt victims, ask confusing questions, and limit their responses in an effort to transform sexual violence into mutual consent in the eyes of a judge and jury.

• Amanda Konradi. 2007. Taking the Stand: Rape Survivors and the Prosecution of Rapists. Westport: Praeger.
• Gregory Matoesian. 1993. Reproducing Rape: Domination through Talk in the Courtroom. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

In the United States, poor people are judged harshly — especially when they receive government assistance or “welfare.” Yet, over 38 million people live in poverty. What people often forget, though, is that poverty itself is expensive. Social science research demonstrates that the poor pay more for necessities like housing and food, and debt can have serious consequences beyond just financial.

The poor pay significantly more for housing than others — sometimes 70% or 80% of their income. In 2018, low-income households paid over half their income for rent or lived in substandard housing. Further, landlords overcharge tenants in high poverty neighborhoods and those with higher concentrations of African Americans relative to the market value of the property. When families cannot afford basic needs they will make calculated tradeoffs to keep their housing, paying for rent instead of utilities to avoid eviction. Such tradeoffs often lead to compounded costs from late fees, and families living without water, electricity, or heat. 

• Matthew Desmond. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Broadway Books.
• Matthew Desmond and Nathan Wilmers. “Do the Poor Pay More for Housing? Exploitation, Profit, and Risk in Rental Markets.” American Journal of Sociology
• Ryan Finnigan and Kelsey D. Meagher. 2018. “Past Due: Combinations of Utility and Housing Hardship in the United States,” Sociological Perspectives.
• Matthew Desmond and Bruce Western. 2018. “Poverty in America: New Directions and Debates.” Annual Review of Sociology 44: 305-18.

Poor families tend to pay more for food, too. Families with precarious housing situations especially struggle — If they do not have a stove or oven to cook with, or space to prepare meals, they must rely on food that can be prepared quickly, like microwave meals or fast food. And even when families are equipped to prepare meals at home, they often do not have the money upfront to buy in bulk, meaning they pay more for food in the long run. According to the USDA, a “thrifty meal plan”– choosing the cheapest options — costs a family between $567 and $651 per month, and this cost does not include home labor. One study estimates families of four would need to spend almost $400 on top of their food stamps to meet guidelines for a healthy diet. 

• Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinnika Elliot. Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It. Oxford University Press.

When poor people face fines and fees, their inability to pay or keep up with payments means they go further into debt. When these fees are part of the criminal justice system, failure to pay can also result in jail time. Anyone convicted of any type of crime is subject to fines and fees, from traffic tickets to felony convictions. And sometimes, these fees are not even dependent on a conviction: In North Carolina all felony defendants pay a “cost of justice” fee ($151.50) whether they are convicted or not. Until the costs are paid off, that person is tied to the criminal justice system — for the poor, this can be a lifetime.

• Alexes Harris. A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor. Russell Sage.
• Karin D. Martin, Bryan L. Sykes, Sarah Shannon, Frank Edwards, and Alexes Harris. 2018. “Monetary Sanctions: Legal Financial Obligations in US Systems of Justice.” Annual Review of Criminology 1:471-95.
• Alexes Harris. 2014. “The Cruel Poverty of Monetary Sanctions.” The Society Pages, White Paper. 

In the wake of the most recent proposed cuts to food stamps — a blip in a long U.S. history of cutting benefits for its poorest citizens — it is important to remember that poverty is not cheap. 

Recently, the American rapper T.I. acknowledged that he attends gynecological examinations with his daughter to “check her hymen is still intact.” While shocking to many, T.I.’s boasting and the public debates it has provoked reveal deeply rooted cultural norms and beliefs about  virginity that young women encounter on a daily basis. Sociological research provides a closer look at how virginity is both socially constructed and discriminatory against girls and women.

People understand virginity and its subsequent “loss” through several frames. Traditionally, most people view virginity as a sexual transition from childhood to adulthood through vaginal-penile intercourse, though people often recognize virginity loss among same-sex couples who engage in other forms of genital sex. For some, virginity is viewed as a gift that may be given to another sexual partner; for others, virginity functions as a stigma that prevents them from progressing in their social life. Still, others see the loss of virginity as one step in the process of growing up and developing healthy relationships with romantic partners. Research has also shown that views and interpretations often change over time, especially in response to new experiences. Overall, these variations demonstrate that virginity is far from a simple biological truth. 

• Laura Carpenter. 2005. Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences. New York: New York University Press.
• Laura Carpenter. 2002. “Gender and the Meaning and Experience of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary United States.” Gender & Society 16(3): 345-365.

The different meanings and interpretations of virginity and loss can have significant social consequences as well. Virginity pledges — promises to remain abstinent until marriage–are one very well researched example. Under this view, pledgers perceive sex as sacred, solely for marriage, and heterosexual. About 12 percent of young people pledge abstinence, though most break that pledge before marriage. Those who break their pledges face negative consequences, including higher possibility for pregnancies and contracting HPV. Social context — including religiosity and the identities of others — contributes to who keeps their pledges.

• Anthony Paik, Kenneth J. Sanchagrin, and Karen Heimer. 2016. “Broken Promises: Abstinence Pledging and Sexual and Reproductive Health.” Journal of Marriage and Family 78(2): 546-561.
• Antoinette M. Landor and Leslie Gordon Simons. 2014. “Why Virginity Pledges Succeed or Fail: The Moderating Effect of Religious Commitment Versus Religious Participation.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 26(3): 1102-1113.
• Peter S. Bearman and Hannah Brückner. 2001. “Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges and First Intercourse.” American Journal of Sociology 106(4): 859–912.

Originally posted April 2017. We’re reposting this in light of California’s recent decision to prevent the renewal of contracts with for-profit prison companies.

Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinstated the use of private prisons in the federal system. This move is welcome news to top corrections corporations such as CoreCivic, but human rights activists are concerned about this shift. Opponents claim that these corporations bring in large profits while their prisons remain rife with safety and healthcare deficiencies, as well as underpaid employees. While these concerns are important to consider, the private prison industry represents a small segment of the American correctional system. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 17% of inmates in federal prisons and 7% in state prisons were held in private facilities in 2015.

During their initial inception, private prisons were believed to be a cost-effective option that could provide better services than government facilities. Despite these goals, much of the current evaluative research suggests that private facilities are no more cost effective than public facilities. Likewise, private prisons appear to perform worse in reducing recidivism than public correctional facilities and have similar (and sometimes worse) conditions than public facilities. In contrast, some evidence suggests that private prisons may be less overcrowded. Due to these ambiguities, scholars of the privatization debate are calling for more research into the qualitative differences between the private and public sector of prisons.

• Andrea M. Lindsey, Daniel P. Mears, & Joshua C. Cochran. 2016. “The Privatization Debate: A Conceptual Framework for Improving (Public and Private) Corrections.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 32(4): 308-327.
• Matthew D. Makarios, & Jeff Maahs. 2012. “Is Private Time Quality Time? A National Private–Public Comparison of Prison Quality.” The Prison Journal 92(3): 336-357.
• Andrew L. Spivak & Susan F. Sharp. 2008. “Inmate Recidivism as a Measure of Private Prison Performance.” Crime & Delinquency 54(3): 482-508.

Regardless of their effectiveness, research suggests that the demographic composition of private prisons is racially disparate. In an analysis of adult correctional facilities in 2005, private prisons had significantly fewer white and more Hispanic populations when compared to their public counterparts. As to why racial and ethnic disparities exist, research points to the role of private prisons in immigrant detention, which has lead some scholars to argue that the private prison industry is just a small segment of a massive immigrant industrial complex. This line of research posits that this complex perpetuates the criminalization and stigmatization of immigrants, especially among Latinos, and as a result comes at a significant cost to immigrant families and communities.

• Brett C. Burkhardt. 2015. “Where Have All the (White and Hispanic) Inmates Gone? Comparing the Racial Composition of Private and Public Adult Correctional Facilities.” Race and Justice 5(1): 33-57.
• Karen M. Douglas and Rogelio Sáenz. 2013. “The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex.” Daedalus 142(3): 199-227.
• Tanya Maria Golash-Boza. 2015. Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions, and Deportations in Post-9/11 America. Routledge.

Originally posted October 13, 2015.

October brings cozy sweaters, Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and lots of pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a worthy campaign: approximately 1 in 8 women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime. But how has breast cancer gained such visibility when others—even other forms of cancer—plague the population at even higher numbers?

Breast cancer awareness campaigns have branded breast cancer through pink ribbons and other merchandise, making the disease not only highly visible, but also a commodity. The signature pink color connects breast cancer to traditional ideas of femininity, beauty, and morality, and allows family and friends to show support.  Color aside, merchandise and freebies like cosmetics and small home appliances reinforce breast cancer’s symbolic ties to beautiful, domestic, heterosexual women as the primary sufferers. This is breast cancer’s “disease regime,” a system of institutional practices and styles of speech that shapes how patients experience it (Klawiter 2004, 851).  

• Maren Klawiter. 1999. “Racing for the Cure, Walking Women, and Toxic Touring: Mapping Cultures of Action within the Bay Area Terrain of Breast Cancer.” Social Problems 46(1): 104-126.
• Maren Klawiter. 2004. “Breast Cancer in Two Regimes: The Impact of Social Movements on Illness Experience.” Sociology of Health and Illness 26(6): 845-874.
• Samantha King. 2008. Pink Ribbons, Inc. Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. University of Minnesota Press.

Large-scale organizations like the Susan G. Komen foundation raise awareness, but often leave out marginalized identities that don’t fit a traditional feminine image. Groups like the Women & Cancer Walk provide spaces for those who don’t fit the mainstream definition of a “breast cancer patient.”

• Gayle Sulik. 2014. “#RETHINKPINK: Moving Beyond Breast Cancer Awareness.” SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecture. Gender and Society 28(5): 655-678.
• Gayle Sulik and Edyta Zierkiewicz. 2014. “Gender, Power, and Feminisms in Breast Cancer Advocacy: Lessons from the United States and Poland.” Journal of Gender and Power 1(1).

The specific image of the breast cancer patient affects who participates in activism and how they view their work for the cause. Many women volunteer for organizations like Komen as a way to connect with other survivors. Often this means that much of their work goes unnoticed, in part because they downplay their activism as trivial volunteering or “just being fair,” further reinforcing the gendered construction of the disease.

• Amy Blackstone. 2004. “’It’s Just About Being Fair’: Activism and the Politics of Volunteering in the Breast Cancer Movement.” Gender and Society 18(3): 350-368.

For more on breast cancer awareness, check out posts at Feminist Reflections, Sociological Images, and two of our recent Discoveries.

Since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) in 1975 and the more comprehensive Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, the number of children receiving special education services has increased dramatically. Today, seven million children in the United States receive special education to meet their individual needs, with more than ever attending their neighborhood schools as opposed to separate schools or institutions.

Because special education has become so institutionalized in schools over the past three decades, we often take for granted that the categories we use to classify people with special needs are socially constructed. For instance, Minnesota has thirteen categorical disability areas, ranging from autism spectrum disorders to blind-visual impairment to traumatic brain injury. But these categories differ from state to state, as do states’ definitions for each category and their protocols for determining when a child meets the diagnostic criteria in a given area. A more sociological take suggests that the “special ed” label does more than just entitle children to receipt of services. For better or worse, it also helps to establish their position within the structure of the mass education system, and to define their relationships with other students, administrators, and professionals.

• Sally Tomlinson. 2012. A Sociology of Special Education. Routledge.

• Curt Dudley-Marling. 2004. “The Social Construction of Learning Disabilities.” Journal of Learning Disabilities 37(6): 482-489.

• Ray McDermott, Shelley Goldman, and Hervé Varenne. 2006. “The Cultural Work of Learning Disabilities.” Educational Researcher 35(6): 12-17.

Research suggests that children of color are overdiagnosed and underserved. They are more likely to be referred for special education testing and to receive special education services than others. This disproportionality occurs more often in categories for which diagnosis relies on the “art” of professional judgment, like emotionally disturbed (ED) or learning disabled (LD). It occurs less often in categories that require little diagnostic inference like deafness or blindness. The attribution of labels can be particularly concerning for children of color, as these labels can be associated with lower teacher and peer expectations and reduced curricular coverage. Even when appropriately placed in special education classes, children of color often receive poorer services than disabled white children. Some research suggests that this happens because the culture and organization of schools encourages teachers to view students of color as academically and behaviorally deficient.

• Carla O’Connor and Sonia DeLuca Fernandez. 2006. “Race, Class, and Disproportionality: Reevaluating the Relationship between Poverty and Special Education Placement.” Educational Researcher 35(6): 6-11.

• Daniel J. Losen and Gary Orfield. 2002. Racial Inequity in Special Education. Harvard Education Publishing Group.

• Beth Harry and Janette Klingner. 2014. Why Are So Many Minority Students in Special Education? Teachers College Press.

• Ellen Brantlinger, Robert Jimenez, Janette Klingner, Marleen Pugach, and Virginia Richardson. 2005. “Qualitative Studies in Special Education.” Exceptional Children 71(2): 195-207.

Given the disproportionate representation of students of color in special education, sociologists have investigated whether a child’s race or ethnicity elevates their likelihood of special education placement. By controlling for individual-, school-, and district-level factors, researchers have found that race and social class are not significant predictors of placement. However, school characteristics — like the overall level of student ability — play a role in determining who gets diagnosed. And, because children of color tend to be concentrated in majority-minority schools, they are less likely to be diagnosed than their white peers.

• Jacob Hibel, George Farkas, and Paul L. Morgan. 2010. “Who is Placed into Special Education?” Sociology of Education 83(4): 312-332.

You may also be interested in a previous article: “Autism Across Cultures.”

For more information on children and youth with disabilities, check out the National Center for Education Statistics.

Originally posted April 26, 2017.

The Trump administration recently announced plans to cut federal public school programs designed to help students who need financial assistance. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney explained that, although programs like free and reduced lunches and after-school activities are supposed to help kids do better in school, “there’s no demonstrable evidence that they’re actually doing that.” Well, social science begs to differ.

To start, research does show that programs providing low-income students with free or reduced-cost lunches have positive impacts, as proper nutrition is essential for academic achievement and educational success. And providing these lunches has been found to lead to a decrease in disruptive behavior. Importantly, research shows that cutting programs like these would mean that the poorest, most at-risk youth would bear the brunt of the blow, losing observed benefits to academic and social skills that subsidized lunches have been shown to provide.

• Godwin Ashiabi. 2005. “Household Food Insecurity and Children’s School Engagement.” Journal of Children and Poverty 11(1): 3-17.
• Christelle Roustit, Anne-Marie Hamelin, Francesca Grillo, Judith Martin, Pierre Chauvin. 2010. “Food Insecurity: Could School Food Supplementation Help Break Cycles of Intergenerational Transmission of Social Inequalities?“ Pediatrics 126(6): 1174-1181.
• Michael Vaughn, Christopher P. Salas-Wright, Sandra Naeger, Jin Huang and Alex R. Piquero. 2016. “Childhood Reports of Food Neglect and Impulse Control Problems and Violence in Adulthood.”  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13(4): 389-408

In addition to lunch programs, extracurricular and after-school activities are threatened under the proposed Trump budget. But there is research that finds these programs can be beneficial. Students involved in after-school programs have been found to experience a variety of positive effects, such as increased attendance at school, a jump in reading comprehension, and a drop in disciplinary referrals. Participating in these programs can predict lower disciplinary measures for students, even for students who are at higher-risk for delinquency. Notably, though there is often a narrative that black students in urban environments are the most “at-risk” and in need of such programs, research shows that African-American students are actually more likely to be involved in after-school activities than white students

• Kathryn Hynes and Felicia Sanders. 2011. “Diverging Experiences During Out-of-School Time: The Race Gap in Exposure to After-School Program.“ Journal of Negro Education 80(4): 464-476.
• Robert Apsler. 2009. After-school Programs for Adolescents: A Review of Evaluation Research. Adolescence 44(173).
• Igor Himelfab, Andrew Lac, and Hadar Baharav. 2014. “Examining School-Related Delinquencies, Extracurricular Activities, and Grades in Adolescents.” Educational Studies 40(1): 81-97.

However, getting at risk-youth to participate in after-school programs is not always easy. There are a wide variety of programs available, but those intended to provide non-delinquent options to at-risk youth often face the greatest uphill battle. Factors determining youth delinquency, such as issues at home, are difficult for extracurriculars to overcome. On a more individual basis, however, extracurricular programs can have meaningful, positive impacts in the long run by giving participants skills, passions, and experiences that prove useful later in life. This complicates the Trump administration’s assertion that  these programs should be cut because they “don’t work.” Rather, paying attention to how they work can lead to more positive impacts and greater availability for America’s students.

• Amanda Brown Cross, Denise C. Gottfredson, Denise M. Wilson, Melissa Rorie, and Nadine Connell. 2009. “The Impact of After-School Programs on the Routine Activities of Middle-School Students: Results from a Randomized, Controlled Trial.” Criminology & Public Policy 8(2): 391-412
• Ingrid Nelson. 2017. Why Afterschool Matters. Rutgers University Press.

Research on “environmental racism” discusses how non-white communities more frequently reside in areas that are environmentally unclean, polluted, or hazardous — often a direct consequence of other racial inequalities. We at The SocietyPages have written about this phenomenon before, but recent research shows that the consequences of climate change have added new dimensions to these dynamics.

Climate change and shifting weather patterns pose issues at large, but racial minorities are more likely to bear the brunt of adverse effects related to climate change. As existing racial inequalities are often linked to neighborhood and place, climate change threatens those who are already at risk of adverse health outcomes due to discrepancies in income, education, and more. In essence, the impacts of climate change are more likely to be felt among poorer, non-white communities.

• Raoul S. Liévanos. 2017. “Sociospatial Dimensions of Water Injustice: The Distribution of Surface Water Toxic Releases in California’s Bay-Delta.” Sociological Perspectives 60(3): 575-599.

• Bongki Woo, Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Victoria Sass, Kyle Crowder, Samantha Teixeira, and David T. Takeuchi. 2019. “Residential Segregation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Ambient Air Pollution.”Race and Social Problems 11(1): 60-67.

• Lauren Richter. 2018. “Constructing Insignificance: Critical Race Perspectives on Institutional Failure in Environmental Justice Communities.” Environmental Sociology 4(1): 107-121.

• John Hannigan. 2017. “Toward a Sociology of Oceans.” Canadian Review of Sociology 54(1): 8-27.

Internationally, climate change has greatly impacted farming, fishing, and other economic activities in developing countries. This has particularly affected poorer, disadvantaged communities in non-white countries, that are more at risk for weakening agricultural yields and devastating super-storms linked to climate change. Researchers now use terms like, “environmental migration” or “climate change induced migration,” to capture the ways migration becomes the best adaptive strategy to the changing climate. Unfortunately, the places they move to are sometimes far from welcoming; racism and prejudice often shape their new lives after climate change induced migration.

• Robert McLeman, Jeanette Schade, and Thomas Faist, eds. 2016.Environment, Migration, and Inequality. Springer.

• Chris Methmann and Angela Oeis. 2015. “From ‘Fearing’ to ‘Empowering’ Climate Refugees: Governing Climate-induced Migration in the Name of Resilience.” Security Dialogue 46(1): 51-68.

• Michael Brzoska and Christian Frohlich. 2016. “Climate Change, Migration and Violent Conflict: Vulnerabilities, Pathways and Adaptation Strategies.” Migration and Development 5(2): 190-210.

Climate change thus poses greater challenges for poorer, non-white communities both in the United States and globally. As adverse environmental factors continue, it is important to think about how the intersection of social and natural forces “turns up the heat” on racial inequality.

The rising number of people in prison and jail has had a dramatic impact on families and children in the United States. By 2012, nearly 2.6 million children had a parent in prison or jail. Parental imprisonment has many harmful impacts on children, including childhood development and cognition, drug abuse, educational success, and childhood homelessness. Although in some cases the incarceration of a parent is necessary to protect the best interests of the child, the “incarceration ledger” — or the complex ways incarceration impacts lives  — is generally negative for kids.

One way parental imprisonment negatively impacts families is by removing a source of income. When incarcerated parents are the key economic support to their family, their absence means a loss of resources. The remaining caregiver may experience significant financial strains, and may  have less time to supervise and provide guidance for their children. Children thus may lose both economic and emotional support due to the absence of a family provider. Even when incarcerated fathers do not contribute to family support, their incarceration can still result in financial pressures on their relatives, who have to pay for significant court costs, transportation for visits, and phone calls to prison.

• Joice A. Arditti. 2013. Parental Incarceration and the Family: Psychological and Social Effects of Imprisonment on Children, Parents, and Caregivers. New York University Press.
• Johnna Christian, Jeff Mellow, and Shenique Thomas 2006. “Social and Economic Implications of Family Connections to Prisoners.” Journal of Criminal Justice 34(4): 443-452.
• Megan Comfort. 2009. Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. University of Chicago Press.

Studies find that children who have experienced parental incarceration are also at risk of many negative mental health outcomes including depression, PTSD, anxiety, and behavioral problems. However, these negative mental health effects may not apply to every case of parental incarceration. Research demonstrates that the incarceration of a father is associated with increased physical aggression for boys, but this association does not hold for boys whose father was incarcerated for a crime of violence or who were abusive to their mothers. Other research suggests that paternal incarceration is connected to higher levels of behavioral problems in children, but this was limited to children who lived with their father prior to his incarceration.   

• Wade C. Jacobsen. 2019. “The Intergenerational Stability of Punishment: Paternal Incarceration and Suspension or Expulsion in Elementary School.” The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 1-43.
• Christopher Wildeman. 2010. “Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Physically Aggressive Behaviors: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.” Social Forces 89(1): 285-309.

The massive growth in parental incarceration is also tied to racial inequality among children. While 1 in 25 white children born in 1990 are at risk of experiencing parental imprisonment, the rate for black children is 1 in 4. These disparities contribute to racial inequality in childhood homelesness, infant mortality, child behavioral and mental health, cognitive development, and educational achievement.

• Anna R. Haskins. 2016. “Beyond Boys’ Bad Behavior: Paternal Incarceration and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood.” Social Forces 95(2): 861–892.
• Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman. 2013. Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality. Oxford University Press.

As many state policymakers and criminal justice practitioners consider how best to curb prison and jail populations, these actors must consider the serious challenges for the children and family of those who are incarcerated.

Sociologist Matthew Desmond’s popular book, Evicted brought to light just how precarious housing can be for someone living in poverty in the United States, but there’s far more to the challenges than money alone. One important and under-appreciated aspect of housing insecurity involves health, and sociologists have shown that the relationships between health and housing are more complicated than you might imagine.

On the one hand, a health crisis can propel a whole family into housing hardship. For instance, one study found that when one member of a household experiences a drastic change in health, the household is much more likely to miss a utility payment. And once they miss that payment, they are less likely to be able to recover the next year, pushing the household further into economic disadvantage.

• Ryan Finnigan and Kelsey D. Meagher. 2018. “Past Due: Combinations of Utility and Housing Hardship in the United States.” Sociological Perspectives 62(1): 96-119.

But the relationship also goes the other way around: Health often suffers following housing precarity. People who have experienced some kind of housing insecurity — getting behind on rent payments, moving for cost of housing, experiencing homelessness — were more likely to report anxiety and depression than those who had not experienced housing insecurity. One particular study showed that evicted mothers were more likely to report depression and poor health for themselves and their children when compared to mothers who were not evicted.

• Matthew Desmond and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro. 2015. “Eviction’s Fallout: Housing, Hardship, and Health.” Social Forces 94(1): 295–324.
• Sarah A. Burgard, Kristin S. Seefeldt, and Sarah Zelner. 2012. “Housing Instability and Health: Findings from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study.” Social Science & Medicine 75(12): 2215-2224.

More positively, getting access to housing while already experiencing housing insecurity can have health benefits. For instance, children who lived in public housing had better mental health outcomes than those who were still on the waiting list.

• Andrew Fenelon, Natalie Slopen, Michael Boudreaux, and Sandra Newman. 2018. “The Impact of Housing Assistance on the Mental Health of Children in the United States.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 59(3): 447-463.

Policy makers and community organizations can utilize social science research on health and housing to improve housing security in the future.