About the Webinar

Morbidity and mortality have been increasing among middle-aged and young-old Americans since the turn of the century. In this talk, I will present this unfavorable trend has been extended to cognitive health and younger cohorts, and explore the underlying socioeconomic, psychosocial, physiological, and bio-behavioral mechanisms. More specifically, I will discuss how increasing early life diseases, obesogenic environment, opioid epidemic, depression, declining religion, weakening marital institution, deinstitutionalized labor market, rising income inequality, and medicalization may jointly lead to this health crisis.

About the Speaker

Hui Zheng is an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. His research focuses extensively on social and policy determinants of health, and population process of aging and mortality. His on-going projects include exploring the trend and causes of population health and inequality in the U.S., determinants and consequences of cognitive aging across the life course, nativity disparities in labor market and health, and the role of selection in the health production and aging process. His scholarship has appeared in top sociology, demography, epidemiology and public health journals.