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Why is Health Related to Socioeconomic Status?

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Author Info
Ellen Meara
Abstract

There are striking disparities in morbidity and mortality by socioeconomic status (SES) within the United States. I examine pregnancy and health at birth to investigate possible mechanisms linking SES and health. I find that a limited set of maternal health habits during pregnancy, particularly smoking habits, can explain about half (one third) of the correlation between SES and low birth weight among white (black) mothers. I show evidence on three hypotheses to explain why health habits vary by SES. First, differences in knowledge by SES create only modest differences in health behaviors by SES, explaining about 10 percent of differential smoking by education. Second, women respond to common knowledge differentially by SES, so that knowledge and its use combined explain up to one third of differential smoking by education. Third, the most important determinants of differential health behavior are 'third variables,' or variables that can simultaneously determine health habits and SES. Finally, I show evidence that network effects at the family level exacerbate differences in behavior regardless of the source.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 8231.

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Date of creation: Apr 2001
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8231

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I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. S. Grosskopf   & S. Self   & O. Zaim, 2006. "Estimating the efficiency of the system of healthcare financing in achieving better health," Applied Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 38(13), pages 1477-1488, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Carol Propper & John Rigg & Simon Burgess, 2007. "Child health: evidence on the roles of family income and maternal mental health from a UK birth cohort," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(11), pages 1245-1269. [Downloadable!]
  3. David Madden, 2002. "Do Tobacco Taxes Influence Starting and Quitting Smoking? A Duration Analysis Approach Using Evidence from a Sample of Irish Women," Working Papers 200206, School Of Economics, University College Dublin. [Downloadable!]
  4. David Madden, 2002. "Sources of Health Inequality for Irish Women," Working Papers 200226, School Of Economics, University College Dublin. [Downloadable!]
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