Explaining Social Disparities by Emulating Interventions at Different Life Course Stages

This study argues that sociological research on the mechanisms that cause social disparities could profit from clarifying theoretical propositions, strengthening the link between theory and analytical approach, and extending the methodological toolbox. I develop arguments through a review of research on mechanisms explaining health disparities with respect to social origin. To increase the clarity of theoretical propositions, I develop the intersectional life course model of inequality formation, which posits that the amount of a social disparity depends on risk chains between intervening mediating mechanisms and the type of intervention emulated to reduce the disparity. To strengthen the link between theory and analytical approach, the intersectional life course model explicates the unit-specific quantities that refer to its propositions. To test these, I analyze data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and employ two novel methods of causal mediation analysis. To demonstrate that these methods yield empirical quantities that speak to the propositions derived from the intersectional life course model, while conventional mediation approaches do not return such coefficients, I contrast the results of these novel methods with results returned by the conventional mediation approaches that have been used in previous research.