Pamela Herd

Care Work Invisible Civic Engagement

Scholars who debate the cause of and solutions for the decline in civic engagement have suggested that Americans have increasingly withdrawn from community organizations, reducing their political activity such as voting and interest in the political world, and generally failing to place the common good over individual self-interest. Their analyses are steeped in a tradition that is largely gender blind and consequently ignores care work. We infuse feminist analyses of paid labor and citizenship, which emphasize the merits and burdens of care work, into the civic engagement debate. We argue that care work, predominantly performed by women, paradoxically limits, enhances, and even constitutes a vital form of civic activity. We call for a fuller slate of social policies that will both redistribute the burden of care work and reinvigorate civic engagement.

The Social Patterns of a Biological Risk Factor for Disease: Race, Gender, Socioeconomic Position, and C-reactive Protein

OBJECTIVE Understand the links between race and C-reactive protein (CRP), with special attention to gender differences and the role of class and behavioral risk factors as mediators. METHOD This study utilizes the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project data, a nationally representative study of older Americans aged 57-85 to explore two research questions. First, what is the relative strength of socioeconomic versus behavioral risk factors in explaining race differences in CRP levels? Second, what role does gender play in understanding race differences? Does the relative role of socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors in explaining race differences vary when examining men and women separately? RESULTS When examining men and women separately, socioeconomic and behavioral risk factor mediators vary in their importance. Indeed, racial differences in CRP among men aged 57-74 are little changed after adjusting for both socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors with levels 35% higher for black men as compared to white men. For women aged 57-74, however, behavioral risk factors explain 30% of the relationship between race and CRP. DISCUSSION The limited explanatory power of socioeconomic position and, particularly, behavioral risk factors, in elucidating the relationship between race and CRP among men, signals the need for research to examine additional mediators, including more direct measures of stress and discrimination.

How Different Forms of Health Matter to Political Participation

Physical and mental health is known to have wide influence over most aspects of social life—be it schooling and employment or marriage and broader social engagement—but it has received limited attention in explaining different forms of political participation. We analyze a unique data set with a rich array of objective measures of cognitive and physical well-being and two objective measures of political participation: voting and contributing money to campaigns and parties. For voting, each aspect of health has a powerful effect on par with traditional predictors of participation such as education. In contrast, health has little to no effect on making campaign contributions. We recommend additional attention to the multifaceted effects of health on different forms of political participation.

Vertical Axes on the Long-Term Care Continuum: A Comparison of Board and Care and Assisted Living

Abstract As the continuum of long-term care has expanded, public funding has not accompanied new care options. I detail access, provider profits and resources, and care quality in two types of residential care that fall in the center of the continuum, assisted living and board and care. These two options provide examples of how limited public funding leads to vertical axes, which represent access to services, the resources providers draw on to give care, and the quality of long-term care services, at each service point on the long-term care continuum.

Health Disparities Among Older Adults

Publisher Summary Attention to health disparities in the US has focused primarily on racial and ethnic differences in health, highlighting the disadvantaged health status of most racial/ethnic minorities, and the unequal access to and quality of care received by many racial/ ethnic minorities. This chapter focuses on SEP: health disparities by education, income, and occupation, and their importance over the life course. It highlights how disadvantages across multiple social statuses, particularly by SEP, race, and gender, combine to produce large health disparities among older adults. It explores what has been learned about how to address health disparities at older ages by focusing on social and economic policies for older adults. The importance of focusing on “upstream” factors, such as SEP, as opposed to “downstream” solutions, such as access to medical care or behavioral interventions is analyzed. Although there has been growing attention to the existence and persistence of health disparities in the US, much remains unknown about what generates these disparities and how policies can intervene to reduce them. Further research on the effects of social welfare supports on the health of elderly Americans could advance both the public policy agenda and basic scientific understanding of the relationship between SEP and health.Publisher Summary Attention to health disparities in the US has focused primarily on racial and ethnic differences in health, highlighting the disadvantaged health status of most racial/ethnic minorities, and the unequal access to and quality of care received by many racial/ ethnic minorities. This chapter focuses on SEP: health disparities by education, income, and occupation, and their importance over the life course. It highlights how disadvantages across multiple social statuses, particularly by SEP, race, and gender, combine to produce large health disparities among older adults. It explores what has been learned about how to address health disparities at older ages by focusing on social and economic policies for older adults. The importance of focusing on “upstream” factors, such as SEP, as opposed to “downstream” solutions, such as access to medical care or behavioral interventions is analyzed. Although there has been growing attention to the existence and persistence of health disparities in the US, much remains unknown about what generates these disparities and how policies can intervene to reduce them. Further research on the effects of social welfare supports on the health of elderly Americans could advance both the public policy agenda and basic scientific understanding of the relationship between SEP and health.