How do sequences of upward and downward socioeconomic mobility influence political views among those who have “risen” or “fallen” during periods of leftist governance? While existing studies identify a range of factors, long-term mobility trajectories have been largely unexplored. The question has particular salience in contemporary Brazil, where, after a decade of extraordinary poverty reduction on the watch of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), a subsequent period of economic and political crises intensified anti-PT sentiment. This article uses original data from the 2016 Brazil’s Once-Rising Poor (BORP) Survey, using a 3-city sample of 822 poor and working-class Brazilians to analyze the relationship between retrospective assessments of prior socioeconomic mobility and anti-PT sentiment. The study found that people who reported a “stalled” mobility sequence (upward mobility followed by static or downward mobility) were more likely to harbor anti-left sentiment than other groups, as measured by this study’s anti-PT index.

In the United States, African Americans face stark inequalities in health. The life course perspective offers a unique viewpoint through which racial disparities in morbidity and mortality may be understood as the result of repeated exposures to risk factors during both childhood and adulthood. However, the utility of this approach is limited by its failure to investigate the degree to which racial/ethnic minorities are able to translate gains in socioeconomic status into favorable health outcomes, both for themselves and for their children. In order to adequately reflect the realities of marginalized groups, life course models must explore the interactive nature of linkages across lifecourse stages, pay particular attention to the unique processes that create and maintain health disparities over time, and consider the specific contexts in which these processes occur. To this end, I examine the ways in which exclusionary forces and discriminatory conditions are likely to prevent African American women and their children from reaping the health benefits typically associated with upward socioeconomic mobility.