Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Taylor Hargrove

The Embodiment of Inequality: Structural Influences on Aging Processes across the Life Course

Taylor Hargrove, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract: The United States faces a growing crisis of aging-related diseases, with Alzheimer’s Disease/Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) projected to increase by over 40% between 2020 and 2050. These conditions and their biological risk factors disproportionately affect Black Americans. Emerging theoretical and empirical research suggest that racialized inequalities in aging-related health outcomes stem from structural racism and its institutional manifestations. Yet, research in this area has tended to focus on downstream factors (e.g., socioeconomic resources; stressors), single indicators of structural racism rather than interconnected systems, and/or aging-related outcomes and risk factors among middle-aged and older adults, for whom clinical manifestations of disease may already be present. This presentation will showcase ongoing research efforts that address these limitations and offer insights from new work investigating how early life exposures to structural racism influence biological aging processes among young and early midlife adults. Implications of the results and suggested avenues for future research will be discussed. 

Taylor Hargrove is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park and a faculty associate at the Maryland Population Research Center. Her research examines how racism and other systems of inequality become embodied and impact population health in the United States. Drawing on stratification, intersectionality, life course, biopsychosocial, and stress process perspectives, Dr. Hargrove employs advanced quantitative methods and analyzes longitudinal, nationally representative datasets spanning the life course from childhood to old age. 

Her current program of research investigates linkages among socio-geographic contexts, individual-level status characteristics, and biological measures of health and aging in young adulthood and early mid-life. Through this work, she clarifies how macro- and meso-level environments shape downstream pathways that affect more proximate causes of poor health. Dr. Hargrove plans to continue this research to illuminate how social factors, particularly manifestations of structural racism, “get under the skin” to shape health and social inequality. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Social Forces, Demography, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Journals of Gerontology, and Public Policy & Aging Report. 

Before joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Hargrove was an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in 2016.