The rapidly growing and evolving literature on the social environment and its influence on health outcomes currently lacks a clear taxonomy of dimensions of the social environment and the differing mechanisms through which each influences health-related behavior. This paper identifies five dimensions of the social environment-social support and social networks, socioeconomic position and income...

We report a positive association between marital radius (distance between mates' birthplaces) and fertility detected in a large population. Spurious association due to socioeconomic factors is discarded by a conditional analysis involving income, education, and urbanicity. Strong evidence of consanguinity's deleterious effects affecting an entire human population is provided.

This is a study of the influence of socioeconomic factors on the state of health of older Canadians. Three years of panel data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics are used to model the transition probabilities between good and poor health. Care is taken to avoid the problem of endogeneity of income in modelling its effects, and to adjust reported income to free it from its strong asso...

This study leveraged data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 243) to investigate the predictive significance of maternal sensitivity during the first 3 years of life for social and academic competence through age 32 years. Structural model comparisons replicated previous findings that early maternal sensitivity predicts social skills and academic achievement throu...