Using Multiple-hierarchy Stratification and Life Course Approaches to Understand Health Inequalities: The Intersecting Consequences of Race, Gender, SES, and Age

This study explores how the intersecting consequences of race-ethnicity, gender, socioeconomics status, and age influence health inequality. 

Summary:

Many scholars have analyzed the effects of race, gender, and socioeconomic status on an individual’s health. There is growing evidence that health inequality exists along all three of these lines. However, there remains a need to understand how each of these factors interacts with the others, as well as how health disparities change over the course of people’s lives.

This study examines how the intersecting consequences of race, gender, socioeconomic status, and age influence health inequality. Brown and his colleagues address two main research questions. First, do health disparities based on race, gender, and socioeconomic status simply add together, or do they interact in a more complex way? Second, do health inequalities increase, decrease, or stay the same as people age?

The researchers used data from the Health and Retirement Study to investigate between- and within-group differences in self-rated health among white, Black, and Mexican Americans. They found that different combinations of identity and resources tend to yield different outcomes. For example, the gap in self-rated health between white women and women of color was greater than that between white men and men of color. In other words, the health disadvantages experienced by women of color are more than the sum of their parts. 

With respect to age, the study broadly found support for the aging-as-leveler hypothesis, which holds that health disparities reduce as people get older. For example, the gap in self-rated health between white people and people of color reduced over the course of their lives, as did the gap between people with more education and those with less. Overall, this evidence demonstrates the importance of analyzing health disparities across the course of life.

Brown, Tyson H., Liana J. Richardson, Taylor W. Hargrove, and Courtney S. Thomas. 2016. “Using Multiple-hierarchy Stratification and Life Course Approaches to Understand Health Inequalities: The Intersecting Consequences of Race, Gender, SES, and Age.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 57(2):200–222.