Marc A. Garcia
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Syracuse University
Background: The risks of disability and mortality in the U.S. are strongly patterned by axes of stratification such as race/ethnicity and gender. An emerging literature has also highlighted how states’ policy contexts shape the risks of disability and mortality. Although this literature has provided key insights into the role of states on disability and mortality for the U.S. adult population overall, it has not examined how states shape those outcomes across racial and ethnic subgroups. This proposal begins to address this gap. It examines how U.S. states’ policy contexts are associated with physical and cognitive disability among older Latino adults and subgroups of Latino adults.
Aim 1: Estimate the associations between U.S. states’ policy contexts and disability risk among older Latino adults and subgroups of Latino adults. The analyses will focus on two measures of disability. One measure assesses difficulty with activities of daily living such as bathing and eating or instrumental activities of daily living such as shopping and running errands. Another measure assesses cognitive difficulty. State policy contexts will be measured with a single, well-established summary score of over 120 state-level policies.
Aim 2: Examine how 16 specific state policy domains, such as labor and immigration, are associated with disability risk among Latino adults in midlife. This aim will analyze the same measures of disability as in Aim 1. The 16 policy domains are components of the overall state policy measure used in Aim 1.