27 March 2025, 14:00 Naftali 527, Tel Aviv University

The Inter-University Demography Forum in collaboration with the Tel Aviv University Department of Sociology and Anthropology invites you to an event featuring a lecture by:

Residential Disadvantage, Weathering, and Health Disparities

Professor Michal Engelman
University of Wisconsin–Madison

The Weathering Hypothesis posits that population health inequities result from the biological embodiment of exposure to economic hardships, discrimination, and social stressors. We examine this hypothesis using the Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW), a uniquely rich dataset that combines social and health survey measures with residential histories spanning up to five decades, spatio-temporally linked neighborhood conditions, and epigenetic clocks constructed from whole blood. We develop and compare approaches to assessing cumulative residential (dis)advantage and examine patterns of exposure across cohorts, racial groups, and geographic locations in Wisconsin, a
state that encompasses both racially segregated urban centers and rural regions with primarily white and rapidly aging populations. We then consider the associations between cumulative exposures to contextual (dis)advantage and epigenetic markers of accelerated biological aging. We find that differential exposure to disadvantage throughout the life course rather than differential susceptibility across groups accounts for aggregate disparities by race and geography.