The Significance of Socioeconomic Status in Explaining the Racial Gap in Chronic Health Conditions

By M. Hayward, E. Crimmins, T. Miles, Yu Yang. American Sociological Review, 2000

526 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Black Americans live fewer years than whites and live more years with chronic health problems. The origins of this racial gap are ambiguous. This study examines the pervasiveness of this gap across chronic medical and disabling conditions among middle-aged persons. Alternative hypotheses about how fundamental social conditions of disease differentiate the health of blacks and whites are also examined. Results show that the racial gap in health is spread across all domains of health, and that socioeconomic conditions, not health risk behaviors, are the primary origins of the racial stratification of health. No evidence was found in support of the idea that blacks and whites differ in their ability to transform socioeconomic resources into good health. The results point to the importance of continued research on how health and achievement processes are linked across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Such studies are needed to enrich work on the inequality of health and life cycle achievement.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94e8cd5bcb55226972dd329a4c1be826305e22ed

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Citations in the corpus

Race and Unhealthy Behaviors: Chronic Stress, the HPA Axis, and Physical and Mental Health Disparities Over the Life Course (2009, background): “A full understanding of racial disparities in physical and mental health requires a consideration of the life course, socioeconomic status, culture, and gender.(1,3,4) Descriptively, health TABLE 1—Sample Characteristics, by Race/Ethnicity: Americans’ Changing Lives Survey,”
Understanding Racial/ethnic Disparities in Health: Sociological Contributions (2010, background): “Recent research continues to find that SES differences among the races account for a substantial component of the racial-ethnic differences in health (Hayward et al. 2000; Williams and Collins 1995; Hummer 1996).”
Cumulative Disadvantage and Black-White Disparities in Life-Course Health Trajectories (2008, background): “One explanation for differential returns to education suggests that institutionalized racism creates structural barriers that restrict both socioeconomic attainment and the subsequent benefits that socioeconomic achievement holds for the health of African Americans (Hayward et al. 2000).”
Stress and Health: Major Findings and Policy Implications (2010, background): “Finally, persons with low education, income, or occupational prestige have the highest rates of morbidity, disability, mortality, psychological distress, and mental disorder compared to those in more advantaged socioeconomic positions (Elo and Preston 1996; Hayward et al. 2000; House 2002; House et ”
CAN'T BUY ME WHITENESS (2008, background): “…may buy access to technology to forestall death, but they do less to reduce the incidence of disease or to lengthen healthy life expectancy ~Geronimus et al., 2001; Williams 1999; Hayward et al., 2000!. Put another way, having greater socioeconomic resources does not always improve health.”
Critical Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Differences in Health in Late Life (2004, background): “Large samples of African Americans and Hispanics, consisting primarily of persons of Mexican origin, were included in this survey.”
Race and Gender Differences in Self-efficacy: Assessing the Role of Gender Role Attitudes and Family Background (2008, background): “African Americans are more likely to experience less opportunity in areas ranging from housing (Massey and Denton 1993), health ( Hayward et al. 2000 ), to employment and pay (Neckerman and Kirscheman 1991; Cancio, Evans, and Maume 1996).”
Issues of race, ethnicity, and culture in caregiving research: a 20-year review (1980-2000). (2002, background): “, socioeconomic status, discrimination, and economic exploitation) of racial and ethnic minorities (Hayward et al., 2000; Stack & Burton, 1993).”
How social class shapes thoughts and actions in organizations (2011, background): “Although research in psychology, sociology, medicine, and other disciplines has demonstrated effects of social class, the mechanisms underlying these effects are perplexing (Elo, 2009; Goodman et al., 2001; Hayward et al., 2000).”
The long arm of childhood: The influence of early-life social conditions on men’s mortality (2004, unknown): “…outcome of a range of childhood conditions and experiences, beginning in utero, combined with the cumulative “insults” experienced during adulthood (Blackwell, Hayward, and Crimmins 2001; Elo and Preston 1992; Hayward et al. 2000; Kuh and Ben-Shlomo 1997; Preston, Hill, and Drevenstedt 1998).”