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Social Inequalities in Bereavement across the Life Course: A Study of Four-Generation Kinship Networks in Sweden

By on November 3, 2026 in Articles

Isaac Sasson, Linus Andersson, Alyson van Raalte, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez

Sociological Science November 3, 2026
10.15195/v13.a48

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The death of family members is a near-ubiquitous human experience that profoundly impacts social and psychological well-being. Mortality decline in high-income countries has rendered this experience more predictable across the life course, yet family bereavement patterns vary across socioeconomic strata. This study proposes a demographic framework for understanding how the interplay of mortality inequalities and variation in kinship structure shapes inequalities in bereavement. Drawing on life course theory, it conceptualizes the burden of bereavement as a multifaceted phenomenon relating to cumulative exposure to kin deaths (intensity), when these deaths occur during the life course (timing), and whether they follow the generational ordering (anticipation). Using Swedish population register data, we reconstruct four-generation kinship networks around the 1973 birth cohort and estimate the burden of bereavement by education and income. Inequalities in bereavement are decomposed into differences in kin mortality and structure. The findings reveal a socioeconomic gradient in family bereavement, mainly in timing and anticipation effects. Individuals with lower socioeconomic status experience the death of parents, siblings, cousins, and children earlier in life. Disparities in cumulative exposure to bereavement are largely offset by differences in kin structure. This study underscores how demographic processes shape inequalities in bereavement across the life course.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Isaac Sasson: Department of Sociology & Anthropology and Center for Population Science, Tel Aviv University.
E-mail: isasson@tauex.tau.ac.il

Linus Andersson: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University.
E-mail: linus.andersson@sofi.su.se

Alyson van Raalte: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; Max Planck–University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health (MaxHel).
E-mail: vanraalte@demogr.mpg.de

Diego Alburez-Gutierrez: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
E-mail: alburezgutierrez@demogr.mpg.de

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to Deborah Carr, Yossi Harpaz, Efrat Herzberg, Rami Kaplan, Erez Maggor, Erez Marantz, and the editors for helpful comments.

Funding Statement: This study was funded by the European Union (ERC, DEM-LOSS, 101232065), the Academy of Finland under Grant 320162 for the INVEST research flagship, the FLUX project funded by the Strategic Research Council (decision number 345130), and the Swedish Research Council grant 2020-06426. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: This analysis is based on restricted-use data from the Swedish population and income tax registries. A replication package including the code is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.33164087


  • Citation: Sasson, Isaac, Linus Andersson, Alyson van Raalte, and Diego Alburez-Gutierrez. 2026. “Social Inequalities in Bereavement across the Life Course: A Study of Four-Generation Kinship Networks in Sweden” Sociological Science 13: 1275-1304.
  • Received: March 28, 2026
  • Accepted: August 17, 2026
  • Editors: Stephen Vaisey, Michael Rosenfeld
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a48


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The Inequality of Lifetime Pensions

By on October 17, 2023 in Articles

Jiaxin Shi, Martin Kolk

Sociological Science October 17, 2023
10.15195/v10.a24

Abstract

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At older ages, most people are supported by pension systems that provide payments based on prior contributions. An important, but neglected, aspect of inequality in how much people receive in pensions is the number of years they live to receive their pension. We examine inequality in lifetime-accumulated pensions and show the importance of mortality for understanding inequalities in pension payments, and contrast it to inequalities in working-age earnings and yearly pension payments among older adults. In contrast to most previous research on old-age inequality comparing different social groups, we focused on total-population-level inequality. Using Swedish register data covering the retired population born from 1918–1939, we found that lifetime pensions are much more unequal than pre-retirement earnings and yearly pensions. Our findings also show that mortality explains more than 50 percent of the inequality of lifetime pensions within cohorts, and plays an important role in explaining changes in inequality across cohorts (192 percent among men and 44 percent among women). Pension policies can affect lifetime pension inequality, but such effects are limited in magnitude unless they directly affect the number of years of receiving pensions.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jiaxin Shi: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany. Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science & Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. Demographic Unit, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
E-mail: shi@demogr.mpg.de

Martin Kolk: Demography Unit, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm, Sweden. Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland
E-mail: martin.kolk@sociology.su.se

Acknowledgements: We thank Jenn Dowd, Christian Dudel, John Ermisch, Martin Hällsten, Robert Hummer, Guanghui Pan, Fabian Pfeffer, Yifan Shen, Joshua Wilde, Alyson van Raalte, and participants at the Oxford Sociology Monday Meeting for their helpful feedback on previous drafts. Jiaxin Shi was supported by the European Research Council (grant no. 716323) and a Leverhulme Trust Grant (Grant RC-2018-003) for the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. Jiaxin Shi gratefully acknowledges the resources provided by the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). Martin Kolk was supported by the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 2019-02552 and 2022-02314) and the Swedish Research Council for Health,Working Life andWelfare (FORTE, grant no. 2016-07115).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Shi, Jiaxin, and Martin Kolk. 2023. “The Inequality of Lifetime Pensions” Sociological Science 7: 667-693.
  • Received: May 24, 2023
  • Accepted: July 31, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a24


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Signs of the End of the Paradox? Cohort Shifts in Smoking and Obesity and the Hispanic Life Expectancy Advantage

By on August 31, 2020 in Articles

Jennifer Van Hook, Michelle L. Frisco, Carlyn E. Graham

Sociological Science August 31, 2020
10.15195/v7.a16

Abstract
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Hispanics’ paradoxical life expectancy advantage over whites has largely been attributed to Hispanics’ lower smoking prevalence. Yet across birth cohorts, smoking prevalence has declined for whites and Hispanics, and Hispanics’ obesity prevalence has increased substantially. Our analysis uses data from the 1989 to 2014 National Health Interview Survey and Linked Mortality files to investigate whether these trends could lead Hispanics to lose their comparative mortality advantage. Simulations suggest that foreign-born Hispanics’ life expectancy advantage over whites is likely to persist because cohort trends in smoking and obesity largely offset each other. However, U.S.-born Hispanics’ life expectancy advantage over whites is likely to diminish or disappear entirely as the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts age due to increases in obesity prevalence and the relatively high mortality risks of those who are obese. Results have important implications for understanding the future of immigrants’ health advantages and ethnic disparities in health.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Van Hook: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: jxv21@psu.edu

Michelle L. Frisco: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: mlf112@psu.edu

Carlyn E. Graham: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: ceg248@psu.edu

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Virginia Chang for helpful comments in her role as a discussant of this article at the 2019 meeting of the Population Association of America. We also acknowledge assistance provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Van Hook, Jennifer, Michelle L. Frisco, and Carlyn E. Graham. 2020. “Signs of the End of the Paradox? Cohort Shifts in Smoking and Obesity and the Hispanic Life Expectancy Advantage.” Sociological Science 7: 391-414.
  • Received: June 13, 2020
  • Accepted: July 20, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a16


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