A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURAL INTERSECTIONALITY AND THE STRUCTURAL INTERSECTIONALITY

This dissertation uses a multi-level approach to assess how social determinants of health
influence life course health trajectories through a structural intersectional lens. The three
chapters assess a macrolevel, meso-level and microlevel exposure, respectively, over a range of
physical, mental, physiological, and self-reported health measures. Longitudinal data from both
the Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Health and Retirement Study
(HRS) is used to integrate a life course approach to health into this work. The structural
intersectionality perspective is employed by using multiple social positions of an individual
(such as race-ethnicity-citizenship) when constructing categories for assessment, as opposed to
relying on a series of interaction terms in the modelling process. Fixed effects models are used to
isolate policy effects in chapter one, while both chapters two and three employ multilevel growth
curve models to map life course health trajectories.