Beza A. Taddess
PhD Candidate in Sociology, Princeton University
I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at Princeton University. I study the biology of social inequality — how conditions like poverty, racism, and caregiving leave measurable traces in the body, and what those traces predict about the lives people go on to lead.
Most of my work follows families. I combine genetic and longitudinal data — epigenetic clocks, polygenic indices, panel studies spanning decades — with designs that can carry causal weight, including sibling comparisons and natural experiments. Recent papers ask when in early childhood family income matters most for a child’s biological aging, whether having children accelerates a parent’s, and what a self-rated health score actually measures.
Research Interests
Medical sociology · Health stratification · Biosocial methods · Race & racism · Epigenetics · Computational social science
Education
- Princeton University PhD Sociology (expected 2027), MA Sociology (2024)
- University of Colorado Denver MA Sociology (2021)
- Colorado College BA Sociology, Minor Asian Studies (2015)
Dissertation Committee
Sam Trejo · Dalton Conley · Sanyu A. Mojola · Tod G. Hamilton
Bold indicates academic advisor
Publications
Published & Forthcoming
- Taddess, Beza. “How Early Do Socioeconomic Gradients in Biological Aging Emerge? Investigating the Role of Early Life Stressors Using DNAm in Children.” Forthcoming at Demography, 2026.
- Taddess, Beza, Tan, Jolene, and Mojola, Sanyu A. “US Black Women’s Health Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Socioeconomic and Temporal Patterns.” American Journal of Public Health 116(4): 502–511, 2026.
- Taddess, Beza†, Zhang, Luyin†, and Trejo, Sam. “Leveraging Genomic Data to Document Within-Race Attractiveness Penalties Among Black Americans.” Sociological Science 13: 802–824, 2026.
- Taddess, Beza A. and Lippert, Adam M. “The Long Half-Life of Neighborhood Poverty: Duration, Timing, and Biological Aging.” American Journal of Epidemiology, 2026. Invited commentary.
- Tan, Jolene, Taddess, Beza, and Mojola, Sanyu A. “It’s about time: Racial/ethnic health disparities conditional on socioeconomic status among US women, 1978–2018.” SSM — Population Health 34: 101930, 2026.
- Lippert, Adam M., Ryan Kim, Robbee Wedow, Jinho Kim, Beza Taddess, and S.V. Subramanian. “Contributions of Socioeconomic and Polygenic Risks to Cardiometabolic Health at Mid-Life.” Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2024.
Revise & Resubmit
- Taddess, Beza and Conley, Dalton. “Do Children Age Their Parents? Causal Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study and Add Health.” Demography.
- Tan, Jolene, Taddess, Beza, and Mojola, Sanyu A. “The Geography of Women’s Health Outcomes in the United States: Examining Variations in Race/Ethnic Disparities across States.” PLOS ONE.
Under Review
- Taddess, Beza, Kuriath, James S., and Conley, Dalton. “Family Size and Parental Health in the Indian Demographic Transition: Evidence from LASI.”
- Tan, Jolene, Sakrejda, Krzysztof, Taddess, Beza, Zelner, Jon, and Mojola, Sanyu A. “The Geography of Men’s Health in the United States, by Race/Ethnicity.”
Working Papers
- Taddess, Beza. “The Remainder of Commensuration: What a Self-Rated Health Score Conceals, and What Text Reveals.”
- Taddess, Beza and Hamilton, Tod G. “Racialized Care Infrastructures: Structural Embeddedness of Racial Disparities in Severe Maternal Morbidity.”
- Taddess, Beza, Tan, Jolene, and Mojola, Sanyu A. “The Geography and Demography of American Happiness: Mapping Who Thrives, Why, and Where.”
- Taddess, Beza. “The Cost of Feeling Old: A Threshold in Subjective Age, Healthspan, and Mortality among Older Americans.”
- Taddess, Beza. “Happiness as Ideology: The Production of Well-Being in the United States.”
Manuscripts in Preparation
- Taddess, Beza. “Environmental Burden and DNA Methylation Aging — Implications for Youth Mental Health and Self-Rated Health.”
- Curran, Emily† and Taddess, Beza†. “Care Work at the Intersections of Race and Gender: The Impact of Occupational Segregation on Perceived and Biological Stress.”
- Taddess, Beza and Trejo, Sam. “The Body Beneath the Rating: A Polygenic Index Recovers the Latent Health in Self-Assessment.”
† joint lead authorship
Teaching
- Racial Inequality (SO113) — Instructor on Record, Colorado College, Spring 2025
- Introduction to Sociology (SOC 101) — Teaching Assistant, Princeton University, Fall 2023 & Fall 2024
Honors & Awards
- GradFUTURES Social Impact Fellowship, Princeton University 2026
- Marvin Bressler Graduate Student Teaching Award 2025
- Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences, Princeton University 2025
- McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning Inaugural Exemplar Mentor 2024
- President’s Fellow, Princeton University 2023–2024
- CLAS Outstanding MA Graduate Student, University of Colorado Denver 2021
- Chancellor’s Fellowship Award, University of Colorado Denver 2019–2020
- Davis United World College Award 2011–2015
Selected Presentations
- “Race, SES, and Early Childhood Learning: Implications for Speech-Language Practice.” University of Colorado Boulder, 2025.
- “Inequality in Aging: Investigating Early Life Stressors and Epigenetic Age in Children.” Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography, Madrid, 2023.
- American Sociological Association, 2026.
- Population Association of America, 2025.
- Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences (IGSS), 2024.
- Behavior Genetics Association (BGA), 2024.