Not just smoking and high-tech medicine: socioeconomic inequities in U.S. mortality rates, overall and by race/ethnicity, 1960-2006.

ABSTRACT: Recent research on the post-1980 widening of U.S. socioeconomic inequalities in mortality has emphasized the contribution of smoking and high-tech medicine, with some studies treating the growing inequalities as effectively inevitable. No studies, however, have analyzed long-term trends in U.S. mortality rates and inequities unrelated to smoking or due to lack of basic medical care, even as a handful have shown that U.S. socioeconomic inequalities in overall mortality shrank between the mid-1960s and 1980. The authors accordingly analyzed U.S. mortality data for 1960-2006, stratified by county income quintile and race/ethnicity, for mortality unrelated to smoking and preventable by 1960s' standards of medical care. Key findings are that relative and absolute socioeconomic inequalities in U

SUBMITTER: Krieger N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3359870 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature