Twin Similarity for Neighborhood, Geographic Mobility, and Health Outcomes in Late Adulthood

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most robust predictors of health. The source of SES-health associations is heavily debated; one approach is investigating neighborhood-level environmental characteristics. Challenges include selection effects and the possibility of reverse causation: people choose their neighborhoods. Longitudinal twin research can overcome these issues by assessing location choice over time as well as twin similarity; however, few existing twin studies have incorporated neighborhood-level data, and none of those focus on aging. Using longitudinal data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging, the current study examined the impact of location at various points in life. Location at birth and in 1993 were available for 972 participants. Birth years ranged from 1926 to 1948; mean age in 1993 was 54.55 (range = 35-67). Thirty-nine percent of the sample had moved to a different county between birth and midlife: individuals who moved had significantly higher parental SES and had achieved significantly higher education. Moreover, identical twin concordance for geographic mobility (77%) was significantly higher than fraternal twin concordance (65%), indicating a modest but significant genetic contribution. Geographic mobility did not impact identical twin similarity on a functional aging factor (corrected for age and education), but fraternal twins concordant for mobility were more similar than discordant twins, suggesting genetic contributions to mobility may also impact health. Ongoing retrieval of location information for twins born 1900-1925 and geocoding of location information available at 9 waves of data collection will allow for expanded investigation of the SES-health relationship at the neighborhood level.

The influence of geographic mobility and gender on Indiana wages

The study examines wage differentials of individuals experiencing unemployment episodes using a multivariate analysis of wage and unemployment records. The focus is the wage effect of small distance geographic mobility (micro-mobility) during job seeking. The results identify limitations on geographic micro-mobility as a source of wage disparity in the re-employment market. The study isolates persistent gender differences in geographic mobility rates and hypothesizes this as a potential source of gender-wage disparity in both the re-employment and greater labor market. The data and methods are unique. The dataset is Indiana administrative wage records over a ten-year period for individuals that experience unemployment episodes. The study assesses unemployment as an exogenous shock on wages to determine underlying influences in the labor market. The novel approach is unconstrained by limitations associated with aggregated or proxy data.

Freedom to Stay-at-Home? Countries Higher in Relational Mobility Showed Decreased Geographic Mobility at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this paper, we examine whether relational mobility (RM) (the ability for individuals to voluntarily form and terminate relationships within a given social environment) on a country level related to individuals’ tendencies to restrict their movement following the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic and following the issuance of stay-at-home orders in their country. We use data on geographic mobility, composed of records of geolocation information provided via mobile phones, to examine changes in geographic mobility at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that individuals in countries with higher RM tended to decrease their geographic mobility more than those in countries with lower RM following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar results were found for wealth gross domestic product (GDP), but were independent of RM. These results suggest that individuals in countries with higher RM were more responsive to calls to reduce geographic mobility.

The Gift of Moving: Intergenerational Consequences of a Mobility Shock

We exploit a volcanic “experiment” to study the costs and benefits of geographic mobility. In our experiment, a third of the houses in a town were covered by lava. People living in these houses were much more likely to move away permanently. For the dependents in a household (children), our estimates suggest that being induced to move by the “lava shock” dramatically raised lifetime earnings and education. While large, these estimates come with a substantial amount of statistical uncertainty. The benefits of moving were very unequally distributed across generations: the household heads (parents) were made slightly worse off by the shock. These results suggest large barriers to moving for the children, which imply that labor does not flow to locations where it earns the highest returns. The large gains from moving for the young are surprising in light of the fact that the town affected by our volcanic experiment was (and is) a relatively high income town. We interpret our findings as evidence of the importance of comparative advantage: the gains to moving may be very large for those badly matched to the location they happened to be born in, even if differences in average income are small.

Between Life and Legend

This article sets out to explore the multiple “senses” in Raoul Peck’s 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro from several perspectives. First, it focuses on Peck’s cinematographic ambitions with reference to his social experience of geographic mobility and to his current position in the transnational field of cinema. The making of I Am Not Your Negro, ultimately led the Haitian-born director, with a commitment to producing a critical “auteur cinema” to create a cinematic testament to the opus of James Baldwin, an author in whom he discovered a language for thinking and for deconstructing racialization. This multi-facetted analysis of Peck’s documentary film and its making will enable us to shed light on the form and meaning of the intellectual quest Peck undertakes in his dialogue with Baldwin.

Geographic mobility and time to seeking care among people with TB in Limpopo, South Africa

SETTING: Human mobility contributes to the spread of infectious diseases. South Africa has a long history of internal labor migration and a high burden of TB.METHODS: People newly diagnosed with TB in the Vhembe and Waterberg Districts of Limpopo answered a questionnaire regarding geographic movement over the past year. Participants were classified as ‘highly mobile’ (spending more than 30 nights at a residence other than their primary residence in the past year, or being ≥250 km from their primary residence at the time of the interview) or ‘less mobile’. We explored associations between sociodemographic characteristics and high mobility, and between mobility and time to presentation at a clinic.RESULTS: Of the 717 participants included, 185 (25.7%) were classified as ‘highly mobile’. Factors associated with high mobility included living with someone outside of Limpopo Province, HIV-positive status (men only), and current smoking (men only). Highly mobile individuals had similar care-seeking behavior as less mobile individuals (adjusted time ratio 0.9, 95% CI 0.6–1.2, P = 0.304)CONCLUSION: Highly mobile people with TB in Limpopo Province were more likely to live with people from outside the province, smoke, and have HIV. These patients had similar delays in seeking care as less mobile individuals.