Sociology of “Aging, Life Course & Health” Comprehensive Exam, Spring 2009
PLEASE ANSWER 3 OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS
1. Describe the association between marital status and health, placing particular emphasis on gender differences/similarities in this association. Please review and evaluate the major explanations for these associations and any evidence for change in these patterns over the past few decades. If there is evidence for change, what are the most likely explanations for such change?
2. Analyses of U.S. socioeconomic mortality differences stratified by age tend to show that relative differences across groups (e.g., by education) are smaller and/or nonexistent in older adulthood and much wider in younger adulthood. Drawing on both the literature that has shown such patterns, as well as the literature that has attempted to unpack some of the reasons underlying these patterns, write an essay that provides your best answer explaining why such observed patterns are commonly found. Moreover, what research strategies would you recommend to students of mortality who are best trying to understand life course patterns of socioeconomic differences in U.S. adult mortality?
3. Congratulations!!! Incoming PAA President Rob Mare just called you up and asked you to put together an expert, blue-ribbon panel for the 2010 annual meeting focusing on the question of, "Did the U.S. make progress toward, or achieve, its goal of eliminating health disparities across socioeconomic groups by 2010?" He expects that the audience will consistent of academic researchers, government program officials from NIH and CDC, and perhaps even a congressional staffer or three. Necessarily choosing folks outside of UT-Austin, which four persons would you ask to comprise this panel, being careful to justify your answers based on their particular insights into this topic? Moreover, who would be your choice for discussant and why?
4. Some scholars have suggested that sex differences in morbidity and mortality will diminish as men’s and women’s social lives become more equivalent. Outline how men’s and women’s health experiences differ and describe how the sex gap in health has changed historically. Evaluate the empirical evidence for the idea that the sex gap in health will diminish with increased social equality in the lives of men and women. That is, will the sex gap in health eventually close? If so, why? If not, why not?
5. There is growing interest in how childhood conditions, including the in utero environment as well as the social environment, affect adult health decades later. Summarize the key explanations of the biological and non-biological associations and mechanisms that purportedly carry the effect of childhood into later life. Critically evaluate the evidence for the alterative ways in which research suggests childhood influences adult health.