Low-income families have increasingly relied on debt as income inequality has grown and state policy has become less redistributive since the 1970s. This study examines the shift toward debt by linking the macro-level patterns in inequality, social policy and family debt to the micro-level analysis of family finances. Using several data sources on family finances--the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I analyze the tradeoff between social assistance and debt at the household level and the dynamics of family debt trajectories over time. Findings suggest that there is a general tradeoff between social assistance income and household debt. The reliance on debt in place of greater redistribution or social assistance is the result of a convergence of factors and explicit policy decisions that have promoted credit to improve the conditions of those who have been excluded from broader economic prosperity. The analysis of debt trajectories shows that debt has grown significantly faster for black families than white families. Social assistance, like welfare and the EITC, has become less effective in protecting low-income families from relying on debt. Taken together, this research suggests that growing debt places low-income families in increasingly precarious conditions in the long term, rather than the stability traditionally offered by the welfare state.

The dissertation explores variation in socio-demographic inequalities in infant mortality in the U.S. with three empirical chapters. The first empirical chapter focuses on inequalities in the likelihood of infant mortality by maternal education. Drawing on vital statistics records, I begin by assessing variation in these disparities across states. In some states, infants born to mothers with less than twelve years of schooling are more than twice as likely to die as infants of mothers with four years of college or more. I then examine how variation in the magnitude of these inequalities is associated with key medical system institutions. I find that more widespread availability of neonatal intensive care is associated with reduced inequality. In contrast, greater supply of primary care is linked to slightly larger differences in infant mortality between mothers with low and high education. In the second empirical chapter, I explore racial disparities in neonatal mortality by stratifying these gaps based on two generating mechanisms: 1) disparities due to differences in the distribution of birth weights, and 2) those due to differences in birth weight-specific mortality. For each state, I then calculate the relative contribution these mechanisms to disparities in neonatal mortality between whites and blacks. Two patterns emerge. In some states, racial disparities in neonatal mortality are entirely a product of differences in health at birth. In other states, differential receipt of medical care contributes to disparities in very low birth weight mortality between white and black neonates. The third empirical chapter evaluates the relationship between local public health expenditures and socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality. Drawing on local government expenditure data in a sample of large municipalities, I explore the extent to which health and hospital spending are associated with inequalities in county infant mortality rates between mothers with low and high levels of educational attainment. For white mothers, I find that hospital expenditures are negatively associated with educational inequalities in infant mortality, but that other health expenditures are positively associated with inequality. In contrast, local public health expenditures are not significant predictors of educational inequalities in infant mortality rates for black mothers. / Sociology

My dissertation formally develops a theory of education-based inequality and mobility to integrate the existing theoretical accounts and results in the fields. The empirical puzzle I examine is why the triangle associations among social origin, educational attainment and social destination present various patterns in different societies under educational expansion. By using a variety of cross-sectional survey data from reforming China, I illustrate that class mobility strategies, structural and institutional features in the educational system and the sociopolitical institutional context are the most important dimensions to understand how educational expansion affects education-based social stratification and inequality. My analyses demonstrate that, with China’s “bottleneck” educational opportunity structure and rising educational cost under educational expansion, we observe increasing educational inequality, declining social mobility and increasing social origin differentials in the college premium in the last three decades. / Sociology

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These examinant le niveau d'integration sociale des personnes vivant avec un handicap physique au sein de la societe canadienne. Le cadre theorique de l'etude s'articule autour de concepts etroitement lies aux ecrits de Pierre Bourdieu et Max Weber soient ceux d'habitus, de reproduction sociale et de situation de classe. On traite, d'une part, des effets chez ce groupe des politiques d'institutionnalisation et, d'autre part, de l'impact de la designation, par les Nations Unies, de l'annee 1981 comme l'Annee internationale des personnes handicapees. Le corps de la these s'organise, dans un deuxieme temps, autour d'un examen des politiques sociales regissant les structures ainsi que des programmes sociaux. On peint ensuite, par le truchement de statistiques a l'appui, un portrait de la population canadienne vivant avec un handicap. Sont ainsi abordes, des themes tels que: l'education, la pauvrete, la violence, les possibilites d'emploi, etc. On conclut la these en signalant l'importance de l'ecart observe a travers l'etude entre la situation socio-economique ideale des Canadiens et Canadiennes qui vivent avec un handicap et celle qui existe reellement en 1990 tout en soulevant les causes sous-jacentes de ce phenomene.