Jan Paul Heisig

Jan Paul Heisig erforscht die Folgen wachsender Bevölkerungsvielfalt für soziale Ungleichheit und Gesundheitsdisparitäten, mit Fokus auf Familienstrukturen und deren Wandel. Im Rahmen des Einstein Centers for Population Diversity untersucht er, wie Ungleichheiten innerhalb und zwischen Generationen in Familien entstehen und weitergegeben werden — ein zentraler Mechanismus für die Reproduktion von Disparitäten in der Gesellschaft. Die Forschung richtet sich an Behörden, Sozialplaner und Organisationen, die Politiken zur Bekämpfung von Ungleichheit und zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitsergebnissen in diversen Bevölkerungen gestalten.

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• Einstein Center Population Diversity

  Quelle ↗

  The Einstein Center for Population Diversity (ECPD) will study the consequences of increasing population diversity for social inequality and health disparities by focusing on the growing diversity of families, including changing conceptions and boundaries of the family itself. The family is a crucial, if not the primary, arena where inequalities are (re-)produced within and across generations, in and through the continuous interaction with social policy, the labor market, and educational institutions. Thus, changing family patterns and behavior are both a source of growing population diversity on the societal level and a driver of social inequality and wellbeing on the individual and household level. For example, when people get married, have children and divorce, they define the population structure. Union formation, marriage and union dissolution also have, however, immediate consequences for socialinequality, poverty, wellbeing and health of individuals and households. The strong relation between family patterns or family behavior and social inequality is maybe most obvious in the case of the large fraction of women who transit into poverty and welfare dependence after separation and divorce. It was also very evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when families took over many tasks that are usually performed by the welfare state including care for children and care-dependent older adults. While this development was instrumental in maintaining key societal functions, it also put many families under intense pressure and strain, depending on the individual family constellation and its resources. The pandemic thus illustrates how families become the “place” where causes and consequences of population diversity and societal challenges play out. The ECPD will transcend disciplinary silos by linking biomedical sciences and social sciences to conduct collaborative research on the interrelations between family diversity, health, education, and social inequalities in aging societies. This will be done by a group of leading scholars in demography, sociology, medicine, psychology, and health sciences. The ECPD will be thus uniquely situated to investigate the biological, psychological, social, and environmental pathways and mechanisms as well as their interrelations operating at the family level. To unravel the longitudinal nature of the intra- and intergenerational effects of diversity in family trajectories and patterns, the ECPD will be committed to a holistic life course approach. Further, as a cross-cutting theme, the ECPD will investigate the role of global and regional crises and their multiple relations with population and family diversity. We will combine household panel data and register-based information with biomarker and genetic data to better understand biosocial pathways along the life course.

• Intersectional Inequalities in the Transition to Grandparenthood and Cognitive Functioning: A Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy

  2024

  The Journals of Gerontology Series B · DOI

  OBJECTIVES: In aging societies, more people become vulnerable to experiencing cognitive decline. Simultaneously, the role of grandparenthood is central for older adults and their families. Our study investigates inequalities in the level and trajectories of cognitive functioning among older adults, focusing on possible intersectional effects of social determinants and grandparenthood as a life course transition that may contribute to delaying cognitive decline. METHODS: Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe, we analyzed a sample of 19,953 individuals aged 50-85 without grandchildren at baseline. We applied multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy to investigate variation in cognitive functioning across 48 intersectional strata, defined by sex/gender, migration, education, and occupation. We allowed the impact of becoming a grandparent on cognitive functioning trajectories to vary across strata by including random slopes. RESULTS: Intersectional strata accounted for 17.43% of the overall variance in cognitive functioning, with most of the stratum-level variation explained by additive effects of the stratum-defining characteristics. Transition to grandparenthood was associated with higher cognitive functioning, showing a stronger effect for women. Stratum-level variation in the grandparenthood effect was modest, especially after accounting for interactions between grandparenthood and the stratum-defining variables. DISCUSSION: This study highlights the importance of social determinants for understanding heterogeneities in older adults' level of cognitive functioning and its association with the transition to grandparenthood. Cumulative disadvantages negatively affect cognitive functioning, hence adopting an intersectional lens is useful to decompose inequalities and derive tailored interventions to promote equal healthy aging.