Health Aff (Millwood). 2005 Mar-Apr;24(2):343-52.

Health disparities by race and class: why both matter.

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Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ichiro.Kawachi@channing.harvard.edu

Abstract

In this essay we examine 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. We point to historical, political, and ideological obstacles that have hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.

PMID:: 15757918; [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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