title: Did socioeconomic inequalities in morbidity and mortality change in the United States over the course of the twentieth century?
abstract: In this article we present two sets of empirical analyses that consider the extent to which socioeconomic gradients in self-assessed health and child mortality changed since the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States. This empirical issue has important and wide-ranging research and policy implications. In particular, our results speak to the value of considering the role of broader social, economic, and political inequalities in generating and maintaining socioeconomic disparities in morbidity and mortality. Despite dramatic declines in morbidity and mortality rates in the United States across the twentieth century, we find that socioeconomic-status gradients in morbidity and mortality declined only modestly (if at all) during that period.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA. warre046@umn.edu
authors.forename: John Robert
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.forename: Elaine M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Hernandez
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006306:Health Surveys; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009017:Morbidity / Q000639:trends*; D009026:Mortality / Q000266:history*; D012923:Social Class; D014481:United States