Behavioral and Socio-economic Factors of Diabetes in U.S Counties: An Empirical Analysis

Although diabetes studies are abundant in current literature in the U.S. but very few of them have studied it from behavioral and socio-economic perspective, significant determinants of diabetes epidemic. Most of them looked at diabetes epidemic either from biomedical, or racial disparities perspectives. Although some studies prevail in literature in terms of exploring diabetes spread in USA from socio-economic status, however, most of them are from population which do not represent all U.S. counties. With a view to scrutinizing diabetes epidemic from behavioral and socio-economic factors we analyzed data from Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) 2000. In this paper we studied on diabetes and its significant behavioral and socio-economic determinants to contribute to the effort to control this epidemic in U.S. counties. Our results reveal that behavioral and socio-economic factors are significant determinants of diabetes epidemic in U.S. counties whereas we controlled all important demographic and racial groups variables in our model specification. However, we find neither age groups nor racial groups are in disadvantage of diabetes which corresponds to racial disparities of being affected in diabetes is not found.