title: Health disparities by race and class: why both matter.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ichiro.Kawachi@channing.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kawachi
authors.forename: Norman
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Daniels
authors.forename: Dean E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Robinson
mesh_terms: D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D044469:Racial Groups; D012923:Social Class; D012935:Social Justice; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology