"Outside the Skin": The Persistence of Black-White Disparities in U.S. Early-Life Mortality.

ABSTRACT: Research on Black-White disparities in mortality emphasizes the cumulative pathways through which racism gets "under the skin" to affect health. Yet this framing is less applicable in early life, when death is primarily attributable to external causes rather than cumulative, biological processes. We use mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System Multiple Cause of Death files and population counts from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Result Program to analyze 705,801 deaths among Black and White males and females, ages 15-24. We estimate age-standardized death rates and single-decrement life tables to show how all-cause and cause-specific mortality changed from 1990 to 2016 by race and sex. Despite overall declines in early-life mortality, Black-White disparities remai

SUBMITTER: Tilstra AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10155466 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature