Javier Rodríguez’s research incorporates theoretical and methodological principles from economics, demography, psychology, and public health to study the political causes and consequences of socioeconomic and racial disparities in health.
He investigates how political actors and institutions, such as presidents and political parties, influence health outcomes at the aggregate and individual levels, and how these health outcomes in turn determine political processes such as policy-making and electoral outcomes.
An important component of his research is the assessment of the political consequences of socioeconomic-driven premature mortality, and the disentangling of the underlying causal mechanisms through which the early disappearance of the poor masks the true detrimental effects of social stratification and political inequality.
Rodríguez received master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from UCLA, and a master’s in political science from Arizona State University in Tempe. He earned an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Office Location
McManus 226
“The politics hypothesis and racial disparities in infants’ health in the United States.” Social Science & Medicine – Population Health 8, (2019): 1-11.
Co-authored with Arline T. Geronimus, et al. “Weathering, Drugs and Whack-a-mole: Fundamental and Proximate Causes of Widening Educational Inequity in U.S. Life Expectancy by Sex and Race, 1990-2015.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 60, no. 2 (2019): 222-39.
Co-authored with Arun Karlamangla, et al. “Social Stratification and Allostatic Load: Shapes of Health Differences in the MIDUS Study in the United States.” Journal of Biosocial Sciences, (2019): 1-18. DOI:10.1017/S0021932018000378.
Co-authored with David Cottrell, et al. “Mortality, Incarceration, and African American Disenfranchisement in the Contemporary United States.” American Politics Research, (2019): 1-43. DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18754555.
“Health Disparities, Politics, and the Maintenance of the Status Quo: A new Theory of Inequality.” Social Science & Medicine 200, (2018): 36-43.
Co-authored with John Bound, et al. “Measuring Recent Apparent Trends in Longevity: The Role of Increasing Educational Attainment.” Health Affairs 34, no. 12 (2015): 2167-73.
Co-authored with Arline T. Geronimus, et al. “Black Lives Matter: Differential Mortality and the Racial Composition of the Electorate.” Social Science & Medicine 136-137, (2015): 193-99.
Co-authored with Jose A. Tapia-Granados. “Economic Crisis, Health, and Austerity: A Comparison of Greece, Finland, and Iceland.” Health Policy 119, no. 7 (2015): 941-53.
Co-authored with John Bound and Arline T. Geronimus. “US Infant Mortality and the President’s Party.” International Journal of Epidemiology 43, no. 3 (2014): 818-26.
Applied Data Analysis: Machine Learning and Data Mining for Social Scientists
Advanced Quantitative Research Methods
Policy Evaluation: Research Design to Solve Real-World Problems
Nature of Scientific Inquiry
Inequality Transdisciplinary Research
Political Behavior