IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fednep/y1999isepp23-36nv.5no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic inequality and social differentials in mortality

Author

Listed:
  • Arline T. Geronimus

Abstract

This paper was presented at the conference \\"Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being\\" as part of session 1, \\"Health status of children and households in poverty.\\" The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. This paper discusses health as a direct measure of economic well-being and draws attention to those suffering the worst outcomes. The author identifies a set of young people at particular risk of high mortality rates. She observes that in some U.S. communities - especially urban areas in the North - young people cannot expect to survive through middle-adulthood. Whites generally fare substantially better than African-Americans, yet whites in poor neighborhoods in northern cities experience mortality rates roughly comparable to those of African-Americans nationwide. Furthermore, among the urban African-American poor, mortality rates worsened relative to those of whites from 1980 to 1990. The author also indicates that circulatory disease - not homicide - has been the most important contributor to the higher mortality rates across all poor populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Arline T. Geronimus, 1999. "Economic inequality and social differentials in mortality," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Sep), pages 23-36.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednep:y:1999:i:sep:p:23-36:n:v.5no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/99v05n3/9909gero.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Gary, 1997. "The "race" concept in smoking: A review of the research on African Americans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1075-1087, October.
    2. John Bound & Michael Schoenbaum & Timothy Waidmann, 1996. "Race Differences in Labor Force Attachment and Disability Status," NBER Working Papers 5536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Sorlie, P.D. & Backlund, E. & Keller, J.B., 1995. "US mortality by economic, demographic, and social characteristics: The National Longitudinal Mortality Study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 85(7), pages 949-956.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Claret M. Mapalad‐Ruane & Carolyn B. Rodriguez, 2003. "Measuring Urban Well‐Being: Race and Gender Matter," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 461-483, April.
    2. Helje Kaldaru & Kaie Kerem & Andres Vırk, 2004. "Health as Factor of Economic Growth: the Estonian Case," Working Papers 110, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Trine Filges & Anu Siren & Torben Fridberg & Bjørn C. V. Nielsen, 2020. "Voluntary work for the physical and mental health of older volunteers: A systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), December.
    2. McNeill, Lorna Haughton & Kreuter, Matthew W. & Subramanian, S.V., 2006. "Social Environment and Physical activity: A review of concepts and evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1011-1022, August.
    3. Cai, Lixin, 2010. "The relationship between health and labour force participation: Evidence from a panel data simultaneous equation model," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 77-90, January.
    4. Heer, Burkhard & Rohrbacher, Stefan, 2021. "Endogenous longevity and optimal tax progressivity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Bound, John & Schoenbaum, Michael & Stinebrickner, Todd R. & Waidmann, Timothy, 1999. "The dynamic effects of health on the labor force transitions of older workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 179-202, June.
    6. Joanna N. Lahey, 2017. "Understanding Why Black Women Are Not Working Longer," NBER Chapters, in: Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages, pages 85-109, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Cain Polidano & Ha Vu, 2012. "Labour market impacts from disability onset," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2012-583, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    8. Jolliffe, Dean, 2011. "Overweight and poor? On the relationship between income and the body mass index," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 342-355.
    9. Michael Lokshin & Martin Ravallion, 2008. "Testing for an economic gradient in health status using subjective data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(11), pages 1237-1259, November.
    10. Alexander, Monica, 2018. "Deaths without denominators: using a matched dataset to study mortality patterns in the United States," SocArXiv q79ye, Center for Open Science.
    11. Morojele, Neo K. & London, Leslie & Olorunju, Steve A. & Matjila, Maila J. & Davids, Adlai S. & Rendall-Mkosi, Kirstie M., 2010. "Predictors of risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancies among women in an urban and a rural area of South Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 534-542, February.
    12. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier, 2003. "Social Security Outcomes by Racial and Education Groups," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(4), pages 842-864, April.
    13. Iskhakov, Fedor, 2008. "Dynamic Programming Model of Health and Retirement," Memorandum 03/2008, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    14. Max Groneck & Johanna Wallenius, 2021. "It Sucks to Be Single! Marital Status and Redistribution of Social Security [Female labor supply as insurance against idiosyncratic risk]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(633), pages 327-371.
    15. Zimmer, Zachary, 2008. "Poverty, wealth inequality and health among older adults in rural Cambodia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 57-71, January.
    16. Shankha Chakraborty & Mausumi Das, 2005. "Mortality, Human Capital and Persistent Inequality," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 159-192, June.
    17. Iribarren, Carlos & Jacobs, David R. & Kiefe, Catarina I. & Lewis, Cora E. & Matthews, Karen A. & Roseman, Jeffrey M. & Hulley, Stephen B., 2005. "Causes and demographic, medical, lifestyle and psychosocial predictors of premature mortality: the CARDIA study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 471-482, February.
    18. repec:osf:socarx:q79ye_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Netta E. Mäki & Pekka T. Martikainen, 2008. "The Effects of Education, Social Class and Income on Non-alcohol- and Alcohol-Associated Suicide Mortality: A Register-based Study of Finnish Men Aged 25–64," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 24(4), pages 385-404, December.
    20. Groneck, Max & Schön, Matthias & Wallenius, Johanna, 2016. "You Better Get Married! Marital Status and Intra-Generational Redistribution of Social Security," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145801, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    21. Shelley I. White-Means & Ahmad Reshad Osmani, 2019. "Job Market Prospects of Breast vs. Prostate Cancer Survivors in the US: A Double Hurdle Model of Ethnic Disparities," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 282-304, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income distribution; Medical care;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fednep:y:1999:i:sep:p:23-36:n:v.5no.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.