Alberto Palloni

Board of Trustees Professor in Sociology
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Sociology, University of Washington, 1977
a-palloni@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Demographer and sociologist Alberto Palloni works on health and mortality, socioeconomic inequality, aging, criminology and statistical and mathematical models for the spread of illnesses.

His current research interests investigate the relationship between early health status and social stratification and inequality and poverty in the United States, determinants of health and mortality disparities among ethnic groups in the United States, families and households in Africa and Latin America, aging and mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the application of mathematical and statistical models to the study of health and mortality determinants, fertility, social stratification, and the spread of disease, in particular for HIV/AIDS.

Palloni is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a National Institutes of Health Merit Scholar, and a past president of the Population Association of America. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif.  

Current Research

Health inequities. In a recent publication in Demography, Palloni argues that studying intergenerational transmission of inequalities should involve integrating theories from different disciplines from labor markets to social stratification with those about childhood health and development. He suggests that consideration of the role of early childhood health status (both mental and physical, in utero and beyond) will lead to a clearer picture of how adult inequities are reproduced over time and across generations. He finds an empirical connection between early childhood health and later social accession that equals, if not surpasses, better-studied aspects of socioeconomic achievement such as educational attainment.

Palloni is also studying the role that the health selection process plays in determining adult disparities in health and mortality. Work in collaboration with a group of doctoral students shows that a statistically significant number of adult health disparities stem from processes that start early in life. Rather than diminishing the importance attributed to socioeconomic status as an explanation of health and mortality disparities, these results magnify it.

Longevity and mortality. Some of Palloni's most recent work deals with theories of longevity and mortality, the connection between adult diseases and early childhood conditions, and the implications that these connections may have for the future of life expectancy in developing countries.

With Mary McEniry of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Malena Monteverde and Kenya Noronha of Northwestern University, he is producing life expectancy projections for Latin American and the Caribbean. The researchers are investigating the extent to which growing rates of obesity and diabetes and the changing nature of the elderly cohorts might contribute to decreases in longevity in the region.

In a recent paper, Palloni and IPR Faculty Associate John Hagan derive estimates of the mortality toll of the conflict in Darfur and provide lower and upper bounds that are consistent with a large body of evidence of very heterogeneous quality.

The aging process. A consultant on aging to a number of organizations, including the World Bank and United Nations, Palloni studies the aging process in developed and developing countries. He focuses on the implications of rapid demographic shifts, especially for the elderly in Latin America and Caribbean countries. In tackling the issue, he takes account of a complex set of social and institutional factors that cover healthcare delivery; pension systems; national economic conditions; distribution of human capital; and family size, structure, and living arrangements among others.

In a recent study with Rebeca Wong of the Maryland Population Research Center and Beth Soldo of the University of Pennsylvania, the authors found that Mexican men over the age of 50 who return to their home country from the United States are wealthier. This economic advantage leads to higher rates of well-being in their old age, perhaps helping to break the cycle of poverty for those men in lower socioeconomic classes.

Modeling and effects of HIV/AIDS transmission in developing countries. Building on seminal work on the spread of the disease in sub-Saharan African from the early 1990s with Luis Lamas of the University of Santiago (1991) and Jean Yu Lee of the University of Hawai'i (1992), Palloni continues to work on formal models of transmission processes and the social impact of this worldwide epidemic.

With Giovanna Merli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he investigates how the epidemic affects kin relations, living arrangements, and the elderly in South Africa, the country with the fastest growing rate of reported infections in the world. They find evidence that the epidemic is driving a colossal shift in family structure as the disease takes it toll on the adult population.

Selected Publications

Articles

Wong, R., B. Soldo, and A. Palloni. 2007. Wealth in middle and old age in Mexico: The role of previous U.S. migration. International Migration Review 41(1): 127-51.

Palloni, A. 2006. Reproducing inequalities: Luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health. Demography 43(4): 587-615.

Palloni, A. 2006. Health status of elderly Hispanics in the United States. In The Health of Aging Hispanics: The Mexican-Origin Population, ed. J. L. Angel and K. E. Whitfield, Chapter 2. New York: Springer.

Palloni, A., with R. Wong, M. McEniry, K. Markides, and M. Pelaez. 2006. The tide to come: Elderly health in Latin America and the Caribbean. Journal of Aging and Health 18(2): 157-79.

Palloni, A., and C. Milesi. 2006. Economic achievement, inequalities and health disparities: The intervening role of early health status. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24(1): 21-40.

Hagan, J., and A. Palloni. 2006. Death in Darfur. Science 313(5793): 1578-79.

Hagan, J., H. Schoenfeld, and A. Palloni. 2006. The science of human rights, war crimes, and humanitarian emergencies. Annual Review of Sociology 32:329-50.

Merli, G., and A. Palloni. 2005. The HIV/AIDS epidemic: Kin relations, living arrangements, and the elderly in South Africa. In Aging in Africa, ed. B. Cohen and J. Menken, 117-65. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.

Book

Vallin, J., S. D'Souza, and A. Palloni, eds. Measurement and Analysis of Mortality: New Approaches. Oxford University Press (1990).