title: Of kin and kidneys: do kinship networks contribute to racial disparities in living donor kidney transplantation?
abstract: In the United States, racial disparities in kidney transplantation are large and especially stark for living donor transplants. Medical researchers frequently attribute this to the availability of medically compatible living kidney donors, who are usually kin. This paper evaluates this hypothesis by testing whether African American transplant candidates likely have lesser access to suitable living donors in their kinship networks than white candidates. This paper evaluates this hypothesis using a simulation design. Contrary to prior research on this topic, this simulation analysis concludes that black-white disparities in living donor kidney transplantation are unlikely to be the result of group differences in the availability of suitable donors. Although individual white kin are individually more likely to be suitable donors, African Americans' larger average kinship networks compensate for this difference.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Alabama, Birmingham, United States; Institute of Behavioral Science and Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado - Boulder, 483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0483, United States. Electronic address: jonathan.daw@colorado.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Daw
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005190:Family / Q000208:ethnology*; D054625:Healthcare Disparities / Q000208:ethnology*; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019520:Living Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: Contraindications; Histocompatibility; Kidney transplantation; Kinship networks; Racial disparities in health; United States