Health Disparities By Race And Class: Why Both Matter
Health Affairs, 24, no. 2 (2005): 343-352
Kawachi, Ichiro; Daniels, Norman; Robinson, Dean E.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/2/343.full
Publisher: Health Affairs
Year Published: 2005
Pages: 10pp Resource Type: Pamphlet
Cx Number: CX12651
This essay examines three competing causal interpretations of racial disparities in health. The first approach views race as a biologically meaningful category and racial disparities in health as reflecting inherited susceptibility to disease. The second approach treats race as a proxy for class and views socioeconomic stratification as the real culprit behind racial disparities. The third approach treats race as neither a biological category nor a proxy for class, but as a distinct construct, akin to caste. The essay points to historical, political, and ideological obstacles that have hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.
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