Abstract:

This dissertation is comprised of two essays on the sociology and economics of health inequalities. In the first essay, I ask whether having richer having friends and neighbors is good or bad for your health. Using a newly available data set that reports individuals' income positions within their self-defined social networks, I find a relationship between relative position and health status, and find indirect support for the biological mechanism underlying the relative deprivation model: lower relative position tends to be associated with those health conditions thought to be linked to physiological stress. I also find, however, that only extremes of relative position matter and that the effect of relative income is much smaller than the effect of absolute income or assets.

In the second essay, I look at the relationship between the sex of the first-born child and maternal weight. I find that the mothers of first-born daughters, on average, weigh 2-7 pounds less than mothers of first-born sons. This weight gap emerges as the first-born enters school and is largest during the child's teen years. I find indirect evidence that some part of this gender weight gap is driven by mothers with daughters feeling worse about their physical appearance and spending more time maintaining their appearance and weight. I also find support for the hypothesis that increased bargaining power associated with the birth of a son leads to mothers of sons weighing more. I find no support for the hypothesis that mothers with sons are heavier because they eat more in the presence of their sons. I also show that it is unlikely that underlying biological factors are significantly biasing these estimates.