My research focuses on understanding the production of racialized disparities in population health. Put differently, my work investigates how broad, racialized social systems — and their constituent institutions — are configured in ways that layer privileges on white populations and hazards on BIPOC populations; my research ultimately seeks to understand how these systematically distributed privileges and penalties arrive on population health. This includes studies that examine how the actions of race-cognizant institutions (e.g., law enforcement agencies) contribute to health disparities; research that considers how multiple racialized systems overlap to gate access to generative health contexts; and projects which demonstrate how structural racism distorts social processes that are foundational to well-being (e.g., the association among education and health). I make use of contemporary statistical methods — particularly Bayesian approaches and techniques for drawing causal(-ish!) inferences from observational data — in addressing these topics.

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Michael Esposito is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota who interrogates the (re-)production of racial disparities in U.S. population health through his research. His work investigates how broad, racialized social systems — and their constituent institutions — are configured in ways that layer privileges onto white populations and hazards onto BIPOC populations and how these privileges and penalties subsequently arrive on population welfare. This includes studies that examine how race-cognizant institutions (e.g., law enforcement agencies) contribute to health disparities; research that considers how racialized systems overlap with one another to gate access to generative health contexts; and projects which demonstrate how racism distorts social processes that are made to be foundational to well-being in the U.S. (e.g., status attainment and health). Dr. Esposito makes use of contemporary statistical methods — e.g., Bayesian approaches and techniques for drawing causal(-ish!) inferences from observational data — in addressing these topics.

Education

Ph.D., Sociology, Certificates in Demography and Statistics, University of Washington
M.A., Sociology, University of Washington
B.A., Sociology, University of Missouri

Selected Publications