Globalization has renewed interest in the place and role of cities in the international system. Recent literature proposes that the fate of cities (and their residents) has become increasingly tied to their position in international flows of investment and trade. Data on the branch locations of the world's 500 largest multinational enterprises in 2000 are subjected to two broad types of network analytic techniques in order to analyze the "world city system." First, 3,692 cities are analyzed in terms of three measures of point centrality. Second, blockmodeling techniques are employed to generalize further about the positions and roles played by cities in the system. These techniques are used to trace out the structure of the world city system, locate cities in the context of a global urban hierarchy, and explore the degree to which this diverges from a simple one-to-one matching of cities onto nation-states in the world system. The phenomenon of globalization has renewed interest in thinking about cities as loci of action in the world system. Recent literature proposes that cities have become increasingly decoupled from local (i.e., regional or national) political geography as the salience of their position in international networks of investment and trade has grown (Friedmann 1986;Knox and Taylor 1995;Sassen 2001). Globalization is argued to be gen-1 Early versions of this paper were presented at

A new focus within both social epidemiology and political sociology investigates how political systems and priorities shape health inequities. To advance-and better integrate-research on political determinants of health inequities, the authors conducted a systematic search of the ISI Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases and identified 45 studies, commencing in 1992, that explicitly and empirically tested, in relation to an a priori political hypothesis, for either 1) changes in the magnitude of health inequities or 2) significant cross-national differences in the magnitude of health inequities. Overall, 84% of the studies focused on the global North, and all clustered around 4 political factors: 1) the transition to a capitalist economy; 2) neoliberal restructuring; 3) welfare states; and 4) political incorporation of subordinated racial/ethnic, indigenous, and gender groups. The evidence suggested that the first 2 factors probably increase health inequities, the third is inconsistently related, and the fourth helps reduce them. In this review, the authors critically summarize these studies' findings, consider methodological limitations, and propose a research agenda-with careful attention to spatiotemporal scale, level, time frame (e.g., life course, historical generation), choice of health outcomes, inclusion of polities, and specification of political mechanisms-to address the enormous gaps in knowledge that were identified.

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Prior scholarship is sharply divided on how or if globalization influences welfare states. Globalization's effects may be positive causing expansion, negative triggering crisis and reduction, curvilinear contributing to convergence, or insignificant. We bring new evidence to bear on this crucial debate with a pooled time series analysis of two measures of the welfare state and 16 indicators of economic globalization for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 1998. The analysis suggests that: (1) state-of-the-art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era; (2) most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects; (3) the few significant globalization effects are in different directions and often inconsistent with extant theories; (4) the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors; and (5) these effects are not systematically different for liberal vs. nonliberal welfare state regimes, European vs. non-European countries, or with four alternative dependent variables. Increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred, but globalization does not unambiguously cause welfare state expansion, crisis and reduction or convergence. Zusammenfassung Bisherige Befunde der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung zum kausalen Verhältnis von ‚Globalisierung' und Wohlfahrtsstaat sind nicht eindeutig. Danach kann Globalisierung positive Effekte haben und zu einem Ausbau an Wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit führen, eine Krise des Wohlfahrtsstaates oder Leistungsreduktionen herbeiführen, kurvilineare Wirkungen aufweisen und zu Konvergenz beitragen, als auch vollkommen insignifikant sein. Unsere gepoolte Zeitreihenanalyse von Wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit und ‚Globalisierung' in 17 reichen Demokratien (1975-1998) hat folgende Befunde zu Tage gefördert: (1) im Zeitalter der Globalisierung erscheinen bestehende Wohlfahrtsstaatsmodelle revisionsbedürftig; (2) die Mehrzahl der ökonomischen Globalisierungsindikatoren weist keine signifikanten Effekte auf; (3) die wenigen signifikanten Effekte zeigen in unterschiedliche Richtungen und stimmen häufig nicht mit bestehenden theoretischen Annahmen überein; (4) die Globalisierungseffekte sind deutlich kleiner als die Effekte binnenpolitischer Variablen und ökonomischer Faktoren; (5) diese Effekte unterscheiden sich in ‚liberalen' und ‚nicht-liberalen' Wohlfahrtsregimen bzw. europäischen und nicht-europäischen Ländern nicht systematisch von einander. Im Analysezeitraum können wir sowohl einen Anstieg der verschiedenen Globalisierungsindikatoren sowie eine moderate Konvergenz der verschiedenen Wohlfahrtsstaaten konstatieren. Jedoch kann der Prozess der ‚Globalisierung' nicht eindeutig als kausale Ursache für die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungsrichtungen in den verschiedenen Wohlfahrtsstaaten identifiziert werden.

Changes in US state policies since the 1970s, particularly after 2010, have played an important role in the stagnation and recent decline in US life expectancy. Some US state policies appear to be key levers for improving life expectancy, such as policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment. US life expectancy is estimated to be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all US states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies, which would put US life expectancy on par with other high‐income countries. Context Life expectancy in the United States has increased little in previous decades, declined in recent years, and become more unequal across US states. Those trends were accompanied by substantial changes in the US policy environment, particularly at the state level. State policies affect nearly every aspect of people's lives, including economic well‐being, social relationships, education, housing, lifestyles, and access to medical care. This study examines the extent to which the state policy environment may have contributed to the troubling trends in US life expectancy. Methods We merged annual data on life expectancy for US states from 1970 to 2014 with annual data on 18 state‐level policy domains such as tobacco, environment, tax, and labor. Using the 45 years of data and controlling for differences in the characteristics of states and their populations, we modeled the association between state policies and life expectancy, and assessed how changes in those policies may have contributed to trends in US life expectancy from 1970 through 2014. Findings Results show that changes in life expectancy during 1970‐2014 were associated with changes in state policies on a conservative‐liberal continuum, where more liberal policies expand economic regulations and protect marginalized groups. States that implemented more conservative policies were more likely to experience a reduction in life expectancy. We estimated that the shallow upward trend in US life expectancy from 2010 to 2014 would have been 25% steeper for women and 13% steeper for men had state policies not changed as they did. We also estimated that US life expectancy would be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies. Conclusions Understanding and reversing the troubling trends and growing inequalities in US life expectancy requires attention to US state policy contexts, their dynamic changes in recent decades, and the forces behind those changes. Changes in US political and policy contexts since the 1970s may undergird the deterioration of Americans’ health and longevity.

This essay brings together intersectionality and institutional approaches to health inequalities, suggesting an integrative analytical framework that accounts for the complexity of the intertwined influence of both individual social positioning and institutional stratification on health. This essay therefore advances the emerging scholarship on the relevance of intersectionality to health inequalities research. We argue that intersectionality provides a strong analytical tool for an integrated understanding of health inequalities beyond the purely socioeconomic by addressing the multiple layers of privilege and disadvantage, including race, migration and ethnicity, gender and sexuality. We further demonstrate how integrating intersectionality with institutional approaches allows for the study of institutions as heterogeneous entities that impact on the production of social privilege and disadvantage beyond just socioeconomic (re)distribution. This leads to an understanding of the interaction of the macro and the micro facets of the politics of health. Finally, we set out a research agenda considering the interplay/intersections between individuals and institutions and involving a series of methodological implications for research - arguing that quantitative designs can incorporate an intersectional institutional approach.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND INCOME INEQUALITYABSTRACT Globalization has attained a prominent place on the sociological agenda, and stratification scholars have implicated globalization in the increased income inequality observed in many advanced capitalist countries. But sociologists have given much less attention to a different but increasingly prevalent form of internationalization: regional integration.Regional integration, or the construction of international economy and polity within negotiated regions, should matter for income inequality. Regional economic integration should raise income inequality, as workers are exposed to international competition and labor unions are weakened. Regional political integration should also raise income inequality, but through a different mechanism: where the regional polity advances market-oriented policies, political integration should drive welfare state retrenchment as states adopt liberal policies in a context of fiscal austerity. Evidence from random-effects and fixed-effects models of national income inequality in Western Europe supports these arguments. The significant effects of regional integration on income inequality are net of several controls, including two established measures of globalization, suggesting that a sociology of regional integration adds to our understanding of rising income inequality in Western Europe.

The provocative hypothesis that income inequality harms population health has sparked a large body of research, some of which has reported strong associations between income inequality and population health. Cross-national evidence is frequently cited in support of this important hypothesis, but the hypothesis remains controversial, and the cross-national work has been criticized for several methodological shortcomings. This study replicates previous work using a larger sample (692 observations from 115 countries over the 1947-1996 period), a wider range of statistical controls, and fixed-effects models that address heterogeneity bias. The relationship between health and inequality shrinks when controls are included. In fixed-effects models that capture unmeasured heterogeneity, the association between income inequality and health disappears. The null findings hold for two measures of income inequality: the Gini coefficient and the share of income received by the poorest quintile of the population. Analysis of a sample of wealthy countries also fails to support the hypothesis.