Sebastian Daza

Lost somewhere in Santiago, Chile

I’m a sociologist, demographer, and data scientist studying health disparities, the criminal justice system’s consequences for health and social integration, and the link between health inequalities and epigenetics.

I rely on statistical and computational methods in my research, emphasizing data science, and agent-based modeling.

I received my PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently I am working as a Senior Researcher at the project ECHO with Alberto Palloni.

I received my Bachelors and Masters in Sociology from the Catholic University of Chile, where I still collaborate with the Center for the Study of Justice and Society.

news

Oct 15, 2020	We wrote a Sociology of Development Policy Brief: Mass Incarceration as a Factor in the US Mortality Disadvantage. Please, check it out !
Dec 18, 2019	I started a new position as Senior Researcher at the IEGD in Madrid, to work on the project ECHO with Alberto Palloni.

selected publications

Early Exposure to County Income Mobility and Adult Individual Health in the US

Daza, Sebastian, and Palloni, Alberto

Working Paper 2021

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Despite substantial research, drivers of the widening gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in the U.S. – the so-called longevity gap – remain unknown. Recent research has suggested that contextual income mobility (e.g., county-level socioeconomic mobility) may play an essential role in explaining the longevity gap. Previous studies – based mostly on aggregate and cross-sectional individual data – show an association between county income mobility and county mortality and individual’s health. However, inferring individual effects from aggregate (county-level) data can be problematic (i.e., ecological fallacy), and measuring exposure to income mobility using the county where respondents currently live or die, might overlook the selection process associated with residential mobility. This paper aims to extend previous research by estimating the effect of average exposure to mobility regimes during childhood and adolescence on adult health using longitudinal data and accounting for selection into counties over time (i.e., residential mobility). We use both the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) with geocoded data to assess the link between county-level income mobility (Chetty’s estimates), behaviors (smoking) and health conditions and status (self-reported health, BMI, depressive symptoms). Furthermore, we use cohorts optimally match Chetty’s estimates of income mobility in the U.S. (1980-1982) and account for selection and time-varying confounders using marginal structural models (MSM). Overall, we provide a more precise test of the hypothesis that childhood exposure to income mobility regimes may determine health status through behavior (i.e., smoking) later in life and contribute to longevity gaps.
Demography

The Consequences of Incarceration for Mortality in the United States

Daza, Sebastian, Palloni, Alberto, and Jones, Jerrett

Demography 2020

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Previous research suggests that incarceration has negative implications for individuals’ well-being, health, and mortality. Most of these studies, though, do not follow former prisoners over extended periods of time and into older adult ages when it is more likely that cumulative consequences of incarceration will be felt. This paper contributes to this literature by employing for the first time the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to estimate the long run association between individual incarceration and mortality over nearly 40 years, and supplementing those analyses with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We then use these estimates to investigate the implications of the US incarceration regime and the post-1980 incarceration boom for the US health and mortality disadvantage relative to industrialized peer countries (the United Kingdom).