Overview | Teaching
I am an assistant professor of sociology at Brown, as well as an affiliate of the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) and Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4). I received my Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA.
I study the social production and consequences of children's well-being, and health in particular. A fundamental question motivates my research: how does the relationship between socioeconomic status and health evolve over the life course and across generations? My research reflects the fact that multiple contexts shape children's well-being and that the effects of these contexts, and of health itself, may vary over the life course. Using several U.S. and British data sources, I have studied children's neighborhood context, and how changes in it over time may influence healthy behaviors and outcomes; the role of educational performance and tracking in explaining links between early-life health and adult social status; and how the influence of poor childhood health on socioeconomic success varies by race/ethnicity and social background. I use a variety of survey data sources in my work.
My primary interest is in understanding how health, contextual factors and achievement/attainment co-evolve over the early life course. In this vein, I am currently working in two areas. First, I am interested in the dynamics of child health and education. Using data from the U.S. and the U.K., I examine how health limitations at different points in childhood reduce the likelihood of high educational and socioeconomic attainment. Secondly, I am extending my research to the children of immigrants, with a focus on their health trajectories, how those trajectories evolve with contextual factors over time, and how the health of youth with migration backgrounds complicates our understanding of the relationship between social inequality and health.
Although most of my time is devoted to my two current projects, I remain interested in not only the variability in children's health over time, but also variability in their environments (specifically, their neighborhoods), and how contextual changes are related to child health and development.
Download Margot Jackson's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format
