Explaining the link between socioeconomic status and health

UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Explaining the link between socioeconomic status and health Ostry, Aleck S.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the various pathways which have been advanced to explain the links between SES and health and the way they have evolved since publication of the Black Report. This will be accomplished by reviewing the evidence most often used to justify these explanations. With this approach a picture of the pathways debate will be presented and, the feasability of using emerging datasets to explicitly test pathway hypotheses will be explored. This paper is divided into 5 sections. In the first section, the Black Report is briefly reviewed, Sections 2, and 3 review the evidence for, respectively, a "psychosocial" and a neo-materialist pathways. In section 4 the most recent studies of income inequality and social capital are reviewed in terms of their implications for the pathways debate. In the final section some thoughts are offered on future research directions.

Item Metadata

Title	Explaining the link between socioeconomic status and health
Alternate Title	HPRU 99:12D
Creator	Ostry, Aleck S.
Contributor	University of British Columbia. Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
Publisher	Centre for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR)
Date Issued	1999-02
Description	The purpose of this paper is to describe the various pathways which have been advanced to explain the links between SES and health and the way they have evolved since publication of the Black Report. This will be accomplished by reviewing the evidence most often used to justify these explanations. With this approach a picture of the pathways debate will be presented and, the feasability of using emerging datasets to explicitly test pathway hypotheses will be explored. This paper is divided into 5 sections. In the first section, the Black Report is briefly reviewed, Sections 2, and 3 review the evidence for, respectively, a "psychosocial" and a neo-materialist pathways. In section 4 the most recent studies of income inequality and social capital are reviewed in terms of their implications for the pathways debate. In the final section some thoughts are offered on future research directions.
Subject	Social status -- Health aspects; Health -- Social aspects; Income distribution -- Health aspects
Genre	Report
Type	Text
Language	eng
Date Available	2014-09-10
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
DOI	10.14288/1.0048506
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50343
Affiliation	Health Care and Epidemiology, Department of; Non UBC; Medicine, Faculty of; Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Faculty
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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