Annual Review of Sociology

Social isolation is a potent predictor of poor health, mortality, and dementia risk. A great deal of research across national contexts provides causal evidence for these linkages and identifies key explanatory mechanisms through which isolation affects health. Research on social isolation recognizes that some people are more likely than others to be isolated, but over the past several decades, researchers have focused primarily on the consequences of isolation for health rather than a systematic assessment of the social conditions that foster isolation over the life course...

Zoning determines what can be built where, and is ubiquitous in the United States. Low-density residential zoning predominates in US cities far more than in other countries, limiting housing opportunities for those who cannot afford large homes. These zoning regulations have racist and classist origins, make housing more expensive, and reinforce segregation patterns. While sociologists study these consequences of zoning, and other causes of unaffordable housing and segregation, they rarely examine zoning itself...

Researchers have investigated the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on a range of socioeconomic and political outcomes. However, approaches to measuring ethnic diversity vary not only across fields of study but even within subfields. In this review, we systematically dissect the computational approaches of prominent measures of diversity, including polarization, and discuss where and how differences emerge in their relationships with outcomes of interest to sociologists (social capital and trust, economic growth and redistribution, conflict, and crime)...

Concern over social scientists' inability to reproduce empirical research has spawned a vast and rapidly growing literature. The size and growth of this literature make it difficult for newly interested academics to come up to speed. Here, we provide a formal text modeling approach to characterize the entirety of the field, which allows us to summarize the breadth of this literature and identify core themes. We construct and analyze text networks built from 1,947 articles to reveal differences across social science disciplines within the body of reproducibility publications and to discuss the diversity of subtopics addressed in the literature...

Dramatic increases in criminal justice contact in the United States have rendered prison and jail incarceration common for US men and their loved ones, with possible implications for women's health. This review provides the most expansive critical discussion of research on family member incarceration and women's health in five stages. First, we provide new estimates showing how common family member incarceration is for US women by race/ethnicity and level of education. Second, we discuss the precursors to family member incarceration...

Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) was originally proposed to explain how socioeconomic inequalities in health emerged and persisted over time. The concept was that higher socioeconomic status helped some people to avoid risks and adopt protective strategies using flexible resources - knowledge, money, power, prestige and beneficial social connections. As a sociological theory, FCT addressed this issue by calling on social stratification, stigma, and racism as they affected medical treatments and health outcomes...

Despite decades of progress, the future of life expectancy in the United States is uncertain due to widening socioeconomic disparities in mortality, continued disparities in mortality across racial/ethnic groups, and an increase in extrinsic causes of death. These trends prompt us to scrutinize life expectancy in a high-income but enormously unequal society like the United States, where social factors determine who is most able to maximize their biological lifespan. After reviewing evidence for biodemographic perspectives on life expectancy, the uneven diffusion of health-enhancing innovations throughout the population, and the changing nature of threats to population health, we argue that sociology is optimally positioned to lead discourse on the future of life expectancy...

While nearly three decades of "new immigrant destination" research has vastly enriched our understanding of diversity in contexts of reception within the United States, there is a striking lack of consensus as to the implications of geographic dispersion for immigrant incorporation. We review the literature on new destinations as they relate to ongoing debates regarding spatial assimilation and segmented assimilation; the influence of co-ethnic communities on immigrant incorporation; and the extent to which growth in immigrant populations stimulates perceived threat, nativism, and reactive ethnicity...

The integration of social science with computer science and engineering fields has produced a new area of study: computational social science. This field applies computational methods to novel sources of digital data such as social media, administrative records, and historical archives to develop theories of human behavior. We review the evolution of this field within sociology via bibliometric analysis and in-depth analysis of the following subfields where this new work is appearing most rapidly: ( a ) social network analysis and group formation; ( b ) collective behavior and political sociology; ( c ) the sociology of knowledge; ( d ) cultural sociology, social psychology, and emotions; ( e ) the production of culture; ( f ) economic sociology and organizations; and ( g ) demography and population studies...

The U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018. Initially designed to assess the nation's progress in combatting poverty, PSID's scope broadened quickly to a variety of topics and fields of inquiry. To date, sociologists are the second-most frequent users of PSID data after economists. Here, we describe the ways in which PSID's history reflects shifts in social science scholarship and funding priorities over half a century, take stock of the most important sociological breakthroughs it facilitated, in particular those relying on the longitudinal structure of the data, and critically assess the unique advantages and limitations of the PSID and surveys like it for today's sociological scholarship...

This review proposes that the end of life is a uniquely contemporary life course stage. Epidemiologic, technological, and cultural shifts over the past two centuries have created a context in which dying has shifted from a sudden and unexpected event to a protracted, anticipated transition following an incurable chronic illness. The emergence of an end-of-life stage lasting for months or even years has heightened public interest in enhancing patient well-being, autonomy, and the receipt of medical care that accords with patient and family members' wishes...

Scholars have long looked to family composition to understand child well-being. Family instability, or the experience of repeated changes in parents' union status during childhood, represents a recent advance in this field that takes into account the dynamic nature of contemporary family organization and considers its implications for children's adjustment and development. We review some of the structural and cultural factors that have contributed to rising levels of family instability and highlight the emergence of national data to measure it...

This review describes stress-related biological mechanisms linking interpersonal racism to life course health trajectories among African Americans. Interpersonal racism, a form of social exclusion enacted via discrimination, remains a salient issue in the lives of African Americans, and it triggers a cascade of biological processes originating as perceived social exclusion and registering as social pain. Exposure to discrimination increases sympathetic nervous system activation and upregulates the HPA axis, increasing physiological wear and tear and elevating the risks of cardiometabolic conditions...

This article provides an overview of the integration of biomarkers and biological mechanisms in social science models of stratification and health. The goal in reviewing this literature is to highlight research that identifies the social forces that drive inequalities over the life course and across generations. The article is structured in the following way. First, descriptive background information on biomarkers is presented, followed secondly by a review of the general theoretical paradigms that lend themselves to an integrative approach...

For the past 80 years, social scientists have been linking historical censuses across time to study economic and geographic mobility. In recent decades, the quantity of historical census record linkage has exploded, owing largely to the advent of new machine-readable data created by genealogical organizations. Investigators are examining economic and geographic mobility across multiple generations, but also engaging many new topics. Several analysts are exploring the effects of early-life socioeconomic conditions, environmental exposures, or natural disasters on family, health and economic outcomes in later life...

We review research on institutions of redistribution operating in high-income countries. Focusing on the nonelderly, we invoke the concept of the household income package, which includes income from labor, from related households, and from the state. Accordingly, we assess three institutional arenas: predistribution (rules and regulations that govern paid work), private redistribution (interhousehold transfers), and conventional public redistribution (operating via cash transfers and direct taxes). In each arena, we assess underlying policy logics, identify current policy controversies, summarize contemporary cross-national policy variation, and synthesize existing findings on policy effects...

Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of family background in shaping life outcomes, only recently have empirical studies in demography, stratification, and other areas begun to consider the influence of kin other than parents. These new studies reflect the increasing availability of genealogical microdata that provide information about ancestors and kin over three or more generations. These data sets, including family genealogies, linked vital registration records, population registers, longitudinal surveys, and other sources, are valuable resources for social research on family, population, and stratification in a multigenerational perspective...

Graduate and professional education play an increasingly important role in economic inequality and elite formation in the United States, but sociologists have not subjected stratification in and through graduate education to the same level of scrutiny recently applied to undergraduate and sub-baccalaureate education. In this review, we discuss how prominent stratification theories might be extended to studies of the role of graduate and professional education, and we review research about stratification at junctures along student pathways into and through postbaccalaureate education to the labor market...

Despite their egalitarian ethos, schools are social sorting machines, creating categories that serve as the foundation of later life inequalities. In this review, we apply the theory of categorical inequality to education, focusing particularly on contemporary American schools. We discuss the range of categories that schools create, adopt, and reinforce, as well as the mechanisms through which these categories contribute to production of inequalities within schools and beyond. We argue that this categorical inequality frame helps to resolve a fundamental tension in the sociology of education and inequality, shedding light on how schools can-at once-be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality...

References to the second demographic transition (SDT) concept/theoretical framework have increased dramatically in the last two decades. The SDT predicts unilinear change toward very low fertility and a diversity of union and family types. The primary driver of these changes is a powerful, inevitable and irreversible shift in attitudes and norms in the direction of greater individual freedom and self-actualization. First, we describe the origin of this framework and its evolution over time. Second, we review the empirical fit of the framework to major changes in demographic and family behavior in the U...