Jason M Fletcher
Biographic Data
| ID | 119494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason M Fletcher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason M |
| FAMILY NAME | Fletcher |
| SIGNATURE | FLETCHER J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8843-0563 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 101 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 489 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 101 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Parental education and children's old-age mortality
Early-life local labor market conditions and old-age male mortality
Previous studies document links between early-life exposures and life-cycle outcomes, but fewer examine how local labor market shocks during early life affect old-age male mortality. This article studies this relationship using a large-scale deindustrialization shock: the decline of New England’s textile industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Consistent with prior work, we find small effects on migration and limited changes in counties’ sociodemogr…
Disentangling depression in women with diabetes
While preliminary, our findings suggest that associations between inflammatory biomarkers and depression may not be consistent across all depressive measures or symptom dimensions. Although larger samples with repeated measures are needed, findings from this exploratory study suggest that including inflammatory measures beyond hsCRP and IL-6, together with tools that capture distinct depressive symptom dimensions, may help to inform future precis…
Causal Effects of Schooling on Memory at Older Ages in Six Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Objectives Higher schooling attainment is associated with better cognitive function at older ages, but it remains unclear whether the relationship is causal. We estimated causal effects of schooling on performances on the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) word-recall (memory) test at older ages in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. Methods We used harmonized data (n = 30,896) on older adults (≥…
Trends in the Female Longevity Advantage of Nineteenth-Century Birth Cohorts
This article uses online genealogy data from the United States over the nineteenth century to estimate period and cohort-based sex differences in longevity. Following previous work, we find a longevity reversal in the mid-nineteenth century that expanded rapidly for at least a half-century. For measures of conditional survival past childbearing age, females enjoyed a longevity advantage for the whole century. Unlike most mortality databases of th…
Does Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages? Causal Evidence From Nonparametric Bounds
We revisit much-investigated relationships between schooling and health, focusing on schooling impacts on cognitive abilities at older ages using the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and a bounding approach that requires relatively weak assumptions. Our estimated upper bounds on the population average effects indicate potentially large causal effects of increasing schooling from primary to secondar…
Early-life lead exposure and male longevity
Trend breaks in life expectancy in the United States over 120 years and potential sources of future gains
Research indicates a significant slowdown in life expectancy growth in the United States (US) post 2010, marking a departure from the consistent progress in longevity throughout the twentieth century. We extend this understanding, tracing the deceleration of US life expectancy back to the 1950s, after which average decadal change dropped from 3.80 to 1.61 years. Surprisingly, these mid-twentieth-century shifts were consistent across race and sex …
Pigeon
Geographic disparities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementia mortality in the US
Findings of this study suggest that state of residence explains more variation in ADRD mortality than state of birth. These results indicate that factors in later life may present more impactful intervention points for curbing ADRD mortality. While early-life environmental exposures remain relevant, their role as primary determinants of ADRD in later life appears to be less pronounced in this study
Disparate Effects of Disruptive Events on Children
Disruptive events such as economic recessions, natural disasters, job loss, and divorce are highly prevalent among American families. These events can have a long-lasting impact when experienced during childhood, potentially altering academic achievement, socioemotional well-being, health and development, and later life socioeconomic status. Much research has considered the overall impact of disruptive events on children's lives, but the conseque…
Variation in Adult Cognition Across Domains and Life Course Place Effects in the UK
This study explores the role that place of birth and place of residence have in variation in cognition in adulthood in the UK. We take advantage of both the large sample size and number of cognitive domains in the UK Biobank to estimate the effect of place of birth and place of residence on adulthood cognition using multilevel modeling. We find, consistent with studies in the US, that place effects at both time points contribute modest variation …
Early-life economic conditions and old-age male mortality
This paper studies the long-run mortality effects of in utero and early-life economic conditions. We examine how local economic conditions experienced during the Great Depression, proxied by county-level banking deposits during in utero and first years of life, influences old-age longevity. We find that a one-standard-deviation rise in per capita bank deposits is associated with an approximately 1.7 month increase in males’ longevity at old age. …
Retirement Makes You Old? Causal Effect of Retirement on Biological Age
Retirement is a critical life event for older people. Health scholars have scrutinized the health effects of retirement, but its consequences on age-related diseases and mortality are unclear. We extend this body of research by integrating measurements of biological age, representing the physiological decline preceding disease onset. Using data from the UK Biobank and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimated the effects of retirement…
Research Note
While parity is a significant factor influencing parental health, its relationship with dementia remains underexplored. This research note advances the literature by conducting a well-powered analysis of associations between parity (i.e., number of children) and Alzheimer's disease and dementias (AD/D) status in large-scale population data. The data contain a large number of AD/D cases (37,228 women and 19,846 men), allowing a range (1–10) of par…
Separating Scarring Effect and Selection of Early-Life Exposures With Genetic Data
Causal life course research examining consequences of early-life exposures has largely relied on associations between early-life environments and later-life outcomes using exogenous environmental shocks. Nonetheless, even with (quasi-)randomized early-life exposures, these associations may reflect not only causation (“scarring”) but also selection (i.e., which members are included in data assessing later life). Investigating this selection and it…
Dust to Feed, Dust to Gray
Intensive agriculture and deep plowing caused topsoil erosion and dust storms during the 1930s, affecting agricultural income and land values for years. Given the growing literature on the relevance of in utero and early-life exposures, it is surprising that studies focusing on links between the Dust Bowl and later-life health have produced inconclusive and mixed results. We reevaluate this literature and study the long-term effects of in utero a…
Educational attainment, family background and the emergence of pain gradients in adulthood
Unequal before death
A growing body of research documents the relevance of parental education as a marker of family socio-economic status for children's later-life health outcomes. A strand of this literature evaluates how the early-life environment shapes mortality outcomes during infancy and childhood. However, the evidence on mortality during the life course and old age is limited. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the association between pater…
Analysis of Sex-Specific Gene-by-Cohort and Genetic Correlation-by-Cohort Interaction in Educational and Reproductive Outcomes Using the UK Biobank Data
Synthesizing prior gene-by-cohort (G×C) interaction studies, we theorize that changes in genetic effects by social conditions depend on the level of resource constraints, the distribution and use of resources, structural constraints, and constraints on individual choice. Motivated by the theory, we explored several sex-specific G×C trends across a set of outcomes using 30 birth cohorts of UK Biobank data (N = 400,000). We find that genetic coeffi…
Re-examining the relationship between education and adult mental health in the UK
Previous studies using variation in education arising from compulsory schooling laws have found no causal effects of education on mental health in the UK. We re-examine the relationship between education and mental health in the UK by taking a different approach: sibling fixed-effects with controls for polygenic scores (summary measures of genetic predisposition) for educational attainment and adult depressive symptoms. We find that higher educat…
Decoupling genetics from attainments
In utero and childhood exposure to alcohol and old age mortality
Understanding Geographic Disparities in Mortality
A rich literature shows that early-life conditions shape later-life outcomes, including health and migration events. However, analyses of geographic disparities in mortality outcomes focus almost exclusively on contemporaneously measured geographic place (e.g., state of residence at death), thereby potentially conflating the role of early-life conditions, migration patterns, and effects of destinations. We employ the newly available Mortality Dis…
The Big (Genetic) Sort? A Research Note on Migration Patterns and Their Genetic Imprint in the United Kingdom
This research note reinvestigates Abdellaoui et al.’s (2019) findings that genetically selective migration may lead to persistent and accumulating socioeconomic and health inequalities between types (coal mining or non–coal mining) of places in the United Kingdom. Their migration measure classified migrants who moved to the same type of place (coal mining to coal mining or non–coal mining to non–coal mining) into “stay” categories, preventing the…
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 has received limited attention in explaining different forms of political participation. We analyze a unique dataset 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…
Incorporating Health into Studies of Political Behavior
We argue that research on political behavior, including political participation, public opinion, policy responsiveness, and political inequality will be strengthened by studying the role of health. We then provide evidence that self-rated health status (SRHS) is associated with voter turnout and partisanship. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and General Social Survey (GSS), we find that people who report exc…
New evidence of the effects of education on health in the US
Medical Adaptation to Academic Pressure
Despite the rise of medical interventions to address behavioral issues in childhood, the social determinants of their use remain poorly understood. By analyzing a dataset that includes the majority of prescriptions written for stimulants in the United States, we find a substantial effect of schooling on stimulant use. In middle and high school, adolescents are roughly 30 percent more likely to have a stimulant prescription filled during the schoo…
Spillover effects of inclusion of classmates with emotional problems on test scores in early elementary school
Over the last decade, the federal government has directed schools to provide educational instruction for students with special needs in general education settings to the extent possible. While there is mixed evidence on the effects of these inclusion policies on the students with special needs, research examining potential spillovers of inclusion on non‐disabled classmates has been scarce. There is particularly little research on the effects of i…
To cause or not to cause? That is the question, but identical twins might not have all of the answers
The effects of intimate partner violence on health in young adulthood in the United States
A Sibling Death in the Family
Although a large literature analyzes the determinants of child mortality and suggests policy and medical interventions aimed at its reduction, there is little existing analysis illuminating the consequences of child mortality for other family members. In particular, there is little evidence exploring the consequences of experiencing the death of a sibling on one’s own development and transition to adulthood. This article examines the prevalence a…
The effects of education on cognition in older age
Race and Ethnic Differences in College Achievement
Using ten years of enrollment data at four Texas public universities, the authors examine whether, to what extent, and in what ways high school attended contributes to racial and ethnic differences in college achievement. As with previous studies, the authors show that controlling for class rank and test scores shrinks, but does not eliminate, sizable racial differences in college achievement. Fixed-effects models that take into account differenc…
High School Classmates and College Success
This article uses administrative data from the University of Texas at Austin to examine whether the number of classmates from the same high school at college entry influences college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003, the authors calculated the number and ethnic makeup of college freshmen from each Texas high school. Empirical specifications included high school fix…
The Impact of Occupation on Self-Rated Health
Our findings suggest that occupation-related differences found at baseline are durable and persist as individuals age
The Challenge of Causal Inference in Gene–Environment Interaction Research
The integration of genetics and the social sciences will lead to a more complex understanding of the articulation between social and biological processes, although the empirical difficulties inherent in this integration are large. One key challenge is the implications of moving “outside the lab” and away from the experimental tools available for research with model organisms. Social science research methods used to examine human behavior in nonex…
Peer influences on adolescent alcohol consumption
Similarity in peer college preferences
Can education rescue genetic liability for cognitive decline
The Emergence of Socio-Genomics
Childhood mistreatment and adolescent and young adult depression
Disparate Effects of Disruptive Events on Children
Disruptive events such as economic recessions, natural disasters, job loss, and divorce are highly prevalent among American families. These events can have a long-lasting impact when experienced during childhood, potentially altering academic achievement, socioemotional well-being, health and development, and later life socioeconomic status. Much research has considered the overall impact of disruptive events on children's lives, but the conseque…
Health, Wealth, and Voting Trajectories in Later Life
In this sample of older, largely White, primarily Midwestern committed voters, civic participation at older ages is shaped by individual experiences with wealth and health across the life course as well as political structures that facilitate or restrict the ability of individuals to consistently participate in elections
Undue Burden Beyond Texas
In this paper, we estimate the impacts of abortion clinic closures on access to clinics in terms of distance and congestion, abortion rates, and birth rates. Between 2010 and 2017, Wisconsin passed three laws regulating abortion providers and two of five abortion clinics closed in Wisconsin, increasing the distance to the nearest clinic to 55 miles on average and to over 100 miles in the most affected counties. We use a difference‐in‐differences …
Gender differences in the association between parity and cognitive function
Multigenerational Effects of Early-Life Health Shocks
A large literature has documented links between harmful early-life exposures and later-life health and socioeconomic deficits. These studies, however, have typically been unable to examine the possibility that these shocks are transmitted to the next generation. Our study uses representative survey data from the United States to trace the impacts of in utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic on the outcomes of the children and grandchildren…
Crushing hope
The Influence of Classmates on Adolescent Criminal Activities in the United States
This article examines the effect of delinquent peers on an individual's criminal activity by leveraging quasi-experimental variation in exposure to peers, separating confounding and causal effects. In particular, we examine the role of wider peer networks (i.e., classmates) as a critical source of influence on adolescents' delinquent behavior. Using a combined instrumental variables/fixed effects methodology, we address important methodological c…
Social multipliers in sexual initiation decisions among U.S. high school students
In this article, I use a national sample of high school students to test for several types of social influences on the decision to have sexual intercourse. I find evidence of endogenous social interactions (social multipliers), where the propensity of an individual choosing to have sex varies with the average behavior in his or her school. Additionally, the magnitude of the social multipliers and several other interesting risk factors differ by g…
Is obesity contagious? Social networks vs. environmental factors in the obesity epidemic
The Impact of Occupation on Self-Rated Health
Our findings suggest that occupation-related differences found at baseline are durable and persist as individuals age
Spillover effects of inclusion of classmates with emotional problems on test scores in early elementary school
Over the last decade, the federal government has directed schools to provide educational instruction for students with special needs in general education settings to the extent possible. While there is mixed evidence on the effects of these inclusion policies on the students with special needs, research examining potential spillovers of inclusion on non‐disabled classmates has been scarce. There is particularly little research on the effects of i…
Childhood mistreatment and adolescent and young adult depression
High School Classmates and College Success
This article uses administrative data from the University of Texas at Austin to examine whether the number of classmates from the same high school at college entry influences college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003, the authors calculated the number and ethnic makeup of college freshmen from each Texas high school. Empirical specifications included high school fix…
Race and Ethnic Differences in College Achievement
Using ten years of enrollment data at four Texas public universities, the authors examine whether, to what extent, and in what ways high school attended contributes to racial and ethnic differences in college achievement. As with previous studies, the authors show that controlling for class rank and test scores shrinks, but does not eliminate, sizable racial differences in college achievement. Fixed-effects models that take into account differenc…
The effects of intimate partner violence on health in young adulthood in the United States
The proof is in the pudding
Peer influences on adolescent alcohol consumption
The effects of teenage childbearing on the short- and long-term health behaviors of mothers
Are soft drink taxes an effective mechanism for reducing obesity
A Genetic Instrumental Variables Analysis of the Effects of Prenatal Smoking on Birth Weight
There is a large literature showing the detrimental effects of prenatal smoking on birth and childhood health outcomes. It is somewhat unclear though, whether these effects are causal or reflect other characteristics and choices by mothers who choose to smoke that may also affect child health outcomes or biased reporting of smoking. In this paper we use genetic markers that predict smoking behaviors as instruments to address the endogeneity of sm…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences
The First Annual Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences (IGSS) conference was held on June 2 to 3 at the Institute of Behavioral Science on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder
Social identity as a determinant of college enrollment
This paper combines ideas from several branches of the social sciences into an economic model of college enrollment, following recent theoretical work by Akerlof and Kranton (2002). Basic to the model are notions of 'fitting in,' social status, and investments in human capital during high school. After using the NELS data and maximum likelihood estimation to uncover the behavioral parameters of the model, I predict the effects of 'economic' and '…
The interplay between gender, race and weight status
Similarity in peer college preferences
Religion and Risky Health Behaviors among U.S. Adolescents and Adults
Recent studies analyzing the effects of religion on various economic, social, health and political outcomes have been largely associational. Although some attempts have been made to establish causation using instrument variable (IV) or difference-in-difference (DID) methods, the instruments and the spatial and temporal variations used in these studies suffer from the usual issues that threaten the use of these identification techniques-validity o…
Interactive effects of in utero nutrition and genetic inheritance on cognition
The Challenge of Causal Inference in Gene–Environment Interaction Research
The integration of genetics and the social sciences will lead to a more complex understanding of the articulation between social and biological processes, although the empirical difficulties inherent in this integration are large. One key challenge is the implications of moving “outside the lab” and away from the experimental tools available for research with model organisms. Social science research methods used to examine human behavior in nonex…
A Sibling Death in the Family
Although a large literature analyzes the determinants of child mortality and suggests policy and medical interventions aimed at its reduction, there is little existing analysis illuminating the consequences of child mortality for other family members. In particular, there is little evidence exploring the consequences of experiencing the death of a sibling on one’s own development and transition to adulthood. This article examines the prevalence a…
Identifying Patients at Increased Risk for Unplanned Readmission
BACKGROUND: Reducing readmissions is a national priority, but many hospitals lack practical tools to identify patients at increased risk of unplanned readmission. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the association between a composite measure of patient condition at discharge, the Rothman Index (RI), and unplanned readmission within 30 days of discharge. SUBJECTS: Adult medical and surgical patients in a major teaching hospital in 2011. MEASURES: The RI is a …
Integrating Work from Genetics and the Social Sciences
gene-environment paradigm, and these papers are excellent examples of this type of work.As such, we see these papers and others in the broad social sciences as part of a much larger work in progress in which the complexity of our research questions seems to increase as we accumulate more information
Bottle and sippy cup use is associated with diet and energy intake in toddlers
The second year of life incorporates a continued shift from a liquid- to solid-based diet. Little is known about the prevalence and dietary impact of bottle and sippy cup use. This paper describes associations between percent of energy consumed via drinking containers (bottles and sippy cups combined) and dietary outcomes, between 1 and 2 years of age. This observational study recruited n = 299 low-income, nutrition programme clients from the Bro…
Enhancing the Gene-Environment Interaction Framework Through a Quasi-Experimental Research Design
This article uses a gene-environment interaction framework to examine the differential responses to an objective external stressor based on genetic variation in the production of depressive symptoms. This article advances the literature by utilizing a quasi-experimental environmental exposure design, as well as a regression discontinuity design, to control for seasonal trends, which limit the potential for gene-environment correlation and allow s…
Psychology (69 works) · Medicine (64 works) · Demography (49 works) · Sociology (47 works) · Developmental psychology (38 works) · Demography (36 works) · Gerontology (31 works) · Population (31 works) · Economics (29 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (29 works)