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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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Racially Distinctive Names Signal Both Race/Ethnicity and Social Class

By on December 12, 2022 in Articles

Charles Crabtree, S. Michael Gaddis, John B. Holbein, Edvard Nergård Larsen

Sociological Science December 12, 2022
10.15195/v9.a18

Abstract

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Researchers studying discrimination and bias frequently conduct experiments that use racially distinctive names to signal race or ethnicity. The evidence that these studies provide about racial discrimination depends on the assumption that the names researchers use differ only based on perceived race and not some other factor. In this article, we assess this common assumption using data from five different studies (n = 1,004; 2,002; 1,035; 5,631; 1,858) conducted at different times across four separate survey platforms (Lucid Marketplace, Lucid Theorem, MTurk, and Prolific). We find evidence that names commonly used to signal race/ethnicity also influence perceptions about socioeconomic status and social class. Specifically, we observe that Americans tend to think that individuals with names typically used by Black and Hispanic people have lower educational attainment and income and are of a lower social class. Even when we present respondents with the educational attainment of a named individual, respondents still perceive Black people as lower social class than White people. We discuss the implications of these findings for past and future experimental work that uses names to signal race. We also articulate the importance of choosing names that best approximate the quantity that scholars want to estimate.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Charles Crabtree: Department of Government, Dartmouth College
E-mail: crabtree@dartmouth.edu; URL: charlescrabtree.com

S. Michael Gaddis: Senior Research Scientist, NWEA; Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles; and California Center for Population Research
E-mail: mgaddis@soc.ucla.edu; URL: stevenmichaelgaddis.com

John B. Holbein: Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia
E-mail: holbein@virginia.edu; URL: sites.google.com/site/johnbholbein/

Edvard Nergård Larsen: Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo
E-mail: e.n.larsen@sosgeo.uio.no; URL: sv.uio.no/iss/english/people/aca/edvardnl

Acknowledgments: We thank the service workers and small businesses in San Francisco’s Mission District for the bountiful supply of burritos that provided fuel for the authors’ intense writing retreat that resulted in this article. We also thank NBA League Pass.

  • Citation: Crabtree, Charles, S. Michael Gaddis, John B. Holbein, and Edvard Nergård Larsen. 2022. “Racially Distinctive Names Signal Both Race/Ethnicity and Social Class.” Sociological Science 9: 454-472.
  • Received: December 4, 2021
  • Accepted: February 21, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a18


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A Taste of Inequality: Food's Symbolic Value across the Socioeconomic Spectrum

By on August 10, 2017 in Articles

Priya Fielding-Singh

Sociological Science, August 10, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a17

Abstract
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Scholars commonly account for dietary disparities across socioeconomic status (SES) using structural explanations that highlight differences in individuals’ wealth, income, or location. These explanations emphasize food’s material value. But food also carries symbolic value. This article shows how food’s symbolic value helps drive dietary disparities. In-depth interviews with 160 parents and adolescents and 80 hours of observations with four families demonstrate how a family’s socioeconomic position in part shapes the meanings that parents attach to food. These differing meanings contribute to distinct feeding strategies across the socioeconomic spectrum: whereas low-SES parents use food to buffer against deprivation, high-SES parents provision food to fulfill classed values around health and parenting. The findings suggest that an understanding of how families’ material circumstances shape food’s symbolic value is critical to fully account for dietary differences across SES.

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

Priya Fielding-Singh: Department of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Stanford University
Email: priyafs@stanford.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by Stanford University’s Vice Provost for Graduate Education and the Department of Sociology. I thank Tomás Jiménez, Michelle Jackson, Doug McAdam, Jeremy Freese, Christopher Gardner, Marianne Cooper, Caitlin Daniel, Kristine Kilanski, Aliya Rao, Melissa Abad, Jennifer Wang, Anshuman Sahoo, Adrienne Frech, and the students in my course, “The Social Determinants of Health,” for their constructive feedback on various drafts of this article. I am grateful to my collaborators at Hillview Central High School as well as to the families who participated in this research and shared their insights and experiences.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation:Fielding-Singh, Priya. 2017. “A Taste of Inequality: Food’s Symbolic Value across the Socioeconomic Spectrum.” Sociological Science 4: 424-448.
  • Received: June 15, 2017
  • Accepted: July 2, 2017
  • Editors: Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v4.a17


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