If a massive earthquake were to strike a region, most people would think about the immediate ecological, economic, and humanitarian devastation.
But Florencia Torche wonders about something different: How will this moment shape the outcomes of children who have not yet been born?
The question reflects a broader research agenda for Torche, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs: Understanding how inequality extends across generations and how early-life experiences — from natural disasters to hate crimes — can influence health, development, and opportunity long before a child enters a classroom.
With a focus on social mobility and the persistence of inequities within society, Torche is primarily concerned with human capital — i.e., an individual’s economic wellbeing, formed by determinants such as health and education. Leveraging natural experiments, which use quantitative approaches to examine the effect of exposures to events such as natural disasters, war, or violence, Torche examines the impact of institutions, policies, and life experiences on an individual’s outcomes over time. In recent years, much of her work has centered on understanding how prenatal exposures to natural disasters can have lasting consequences on a person’s life.
"Whatever happens in early life, even before birth, can have persistent, long-lasting consequences," Torche said. “The prenatal period has all of these critical developmental windows, and if the development is disturbed, that can have long-lasting consequences.”
One of her most notable studies examined the effects of a major earthquake in Chile. Using the disaster as a natural experiment, Torche compared children whose mothers were exposed to the earthquake during pregnancy with children in similar, unaffected regions. She found that prenatal exposure to the earthquake negatively affected cognitive development years later.
The data became even more striking when viewed through the lens of inequality.
While children from disadvantaged families experienced significant negative effects, those impacts were largely absent among children from middle- and upper-income families. Torche's research suggests that families with greater economic, educational, and social resources were often better positioned to identify developmental challenges and seek support through healthcare providers, tutors, and other interventions.
For Torche, the findings reinforce the question she has been grappling with throughout her entire research career: Why does inequality persist across generations?
Growing up in Chile, she witnessed the effects of inequality firsthand. People living in the same city often inhabited what felt like entirely different worlds, marked by differences in schools, social circles, and opportunities.
"People lived in very different neighborhoods, used completely different institutions, spoke differently, ate differently, had different friendship networks, and never met each other because the inequality gap was so wide,” Torche said. "It was so obvious to me that that was an untenable situation; it wasn’t a good society to live in."
Those early observations, combined with growing evidence from the biological behavioral sciences about the importance of prenatal and early childhood development, continue to drive her research efforts today.
Most recently, Torche has been studying the effects of race-based hate crimes in the United States. In ongoing research, she and Tiffany Liu, a Princeton sociology Ph.D. student with whom she is collaborating, have found evidence that exposure to local hate crimes during pregnancy can negatively affect infant health outcomes among mothers who share the targeted racial or ethnic identity. The work adds to a growing body of evidence showing how stress and adversity can affect health before a child is even born.
“SPIA has provided a stimulating interdisciplinary community, one that encourages me to bring the practical and policy implications of my scholarship to the fore,” she said.
Ultimately, Torche hopes her research can help policymakers identify vulnerable children earlier and provide support before disadvantages become entrenched. By understanding how early-life exposures shape later outcomes, she believes interventions can be targeted when they have the greatest potential to make a difference.
“This is aligned with the concern I have with inequality as a comprehensive phenomenon that is not just about economic resources,” Torche said. “It also has to do with educational resources, cultural resources, and social capital — such as connections — that present barriers for some families, preventing them from overcoming exposure to adversity in any form. All of these exposures can be compensated, but the ability to compensate really depends on the resources you can mobilize.”
Photo courtesy of Florencia Torche.