Overview
Arline T. Geronimus is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She is the originator of the "weathering" hypothesis — that chronic exposure to social adversity triggers repeated physiological stress responses (allostatic load), accelerating biological aging and producing premature mortality in disadvantaged populations. Her empirical work focuses on racial and socioeconomic disparities in health, particularly for Black Americans.
Key Contributions
- Weathering hypothesis: cumulative biological wear from chronic psychosocial stress — repeated activation of the HPA axis, elevated cortisol, and inflammatory pathways — accelerates aging and increases vulnerability to chronic disease, functional limitation, and premature death. Documents this in excess Black mortality and among the poorest rural and urban whites.
- Compositional bias in LE trends (Bound, Geronimus, Rodriguez, and Waidmann 2015): co-documented that the Olshansky dramatic LE-decline finding is largely a measurement artifact driven by rising educational attainment; genuine stagnation for white women at low SES survives the correction.
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