The Increasing Salience of Health in Social Forces Research

Abstract

Global life expectancy at birth approximately doubled during the 100-year history of Social Forces (Heuveline 2022; Riley 2005). As the average length of life of the individuals and their experiences in the communities and institutions studied in the journal increased, health became more salient to social and economic life. The increasing prominence of health, embodied by an individual’s continuing physical, emotional, mental, and social ability to cope with his or her environment over the life course, is reflected in the trend of health-related articles in Social Forces. A handful of health-related articles appeared during the decades from 1920 to 1960, followed by a small but steady flow of publications from 1970 to 2000, after which there has been more growth and diversity in health-related publications in the twentieth-first-century issues of Social Forces. The trend in health research within Social Forces has been driven by three factors: (1) the substantive relevance of health status, behavior, and healthcare (i) within societal structures and institutional contexts, (ii) in relation to social behavior, and (iii) as influenced by social stratification processes; (2) increasing availability of high-quality health data; and (3) increased attention to measurement of health. While much of the early health research published in Social Forces focused on mental health and mental health systems, over time as new surveys delivered a greater range of health measures, research soon included diverse measures of general health status, health behavior, and physical health indicators and change in them over time.