Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Intersections of Health and Wealth: Socioeconomic Status, Frailty, and Mortality

长期以来，社会经济地位(SES)一直被认为是接触危险和疾病的媒介，以及获得生长、发育、组织维护和免疫反应所必需的资源。然而，SES和死亡率之间的联系往往过于简单化，在极端情况下，可能会误导卫生政策和治疗方案，使其不了解个人在各种情况下面临的风险。生物人类学通过根据公共卫生研究人员目前支持的理论观点来解释生物考古研究的结果，从而很好地探索过去SES和Heath模式的变异性。公共卫生研究人员正在调查SES与活着人口健康之间的联系。这个项目为探索过去社会中的社会经济地位提供了一个新的模式，并将通过关注一种不同于这些理论观点所应用到的现代工业化人口的背景，扩大对社会经济地位随时间的影响的理解。因此，这一多学科项目将推进生物人类学的研究，并通过将交叉性理论纳入对过去健康的研究来扩大公共卫生研究的时间范围。此外，这项工作将培养一名女性研究生，并为美国和英国的公共科学推广工作做出贡献。本论文项目使用骨骼样本来研究19世纪英国工业化背景下SES、人口统计特征(如年龄和性别)、生理应激源暴露和死亡率之间的交互作用。来自四个工业时代墓地(Coach Lane、St.Bride‘s Fleet Street、St.Peter’s Wolverhampton和New BunHill Fields)的骨骼数据将用古人口学方法(危险建模、分层对数线性分析和方差分析)进行分析，以确定工业英格兰的发病率和死亡率模式在SES群体之间的差异；调查一生中的生理应激源如何与年龄和性别等具有社会意义的类别相互作用，产生分层的边缘化，从而影响工业英格兰的脆弱和死亡率；并评估生物人类学文献中未被代表的应激源的潜力，以加强对过去边缘化、交叉性和死亡率的理解。

Socioeconomic status (SES) has long been known to mediate exposure to hazards and disease, as well as access to those resources necessary for growth, development, tissue maintenance, and immune response. However, the connection between SES and mortality is often oversimplified, and, in extreme cases, could misinform health policy and treatment protocols about the risks faced by individuals in a variety of contexts. Biological anthropology is well-equipped to explore the variability of patterns of SES and heath in the past by interpreting the results of bioarchaeological research in light of current theoretical perspectives espoused by public health researchers investigating the connection between SES and health in living populations. This project provides a novel model for exploring SES in past societies and will broaden understanding of the effects of SES across time by focusing on a context that differs from the modern, industrialized populations to which these theoretical perspectives have been applied. As a result, this multidisciplinary project will advance research in biological anthropology and extend the temporal purview of public health research by incorporating intersectionality theory into a study of past health. Moreover, the work will train a female graduate student and contribute to public science outreach efforts in both the United States and the United Kingdom.This dissertation project uses skeletal samples to examine the interactions of SES, demographic characteristics (such as age and sex), exposure to physiological stressors, and mortality in the context of industrialization in 19th century England. Skeletal data from four industrial-era cemeteries (Coach Lane, St. Bride's Fleet Street, St. Peter's Wolverhampton, and New Bunhill Fields) will be analyzed with paleodemographic approaches (hazard modeling, hierarchical log-linear analysis, and analysis of variance) to determine how morbidity and mortality patterns in industrial England differed between SES groups; investigate how physiological stressors throughout life interacted with socially meaningful categories such as age and sex to produce layered marginalizations that influenced frailty and mortality in industrial England; and evaluate the potential of stressors underrepresented in biological anthropology literature to enhance understanding of marginalization, intersectionality, and mortality in the past.