Health equity
Did US premature-death inequities only widen as health improved?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
US premature mortality inequities shrank in the late 1960s–1970s then widened or stagnated—showing disparities do not automatically move with average health.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Not yet placed on a claim. This paper has study layers, but no concept page yet cites it as support, challenge, or qualifier.
Inspect source passages
Did US premature-death inequities only widen as health improved?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
What temporal pattern of inequities is summarised?
In summary, our evidence of decreasing and then increasing or stagnating socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in US premature mortality and infant death requires explanation and refutes the view that improvements in population health by default entail growing or shrinking health disparities, whether absolute or relative.
Which mortality outcomes were tracked?
Moreover, recognizing the complex interplay between socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequality and health inequities in the United States [,,], we opted to analyze trends in socioeconomic inequities in premature mortality for the total population and by race/ethnicity.
Key findings
Inequities fell especially between 1966 and 1980 (notably for populations of color), then relative gaps widened and absolute gaps stagnated. Relative premature-mortality ratios of about 1.3 in 1970/1980 rose later.
Methodology
Researchers tracked premature mortality and infant death across US county income quintiles and racial/ethnic groups from 1960 to 2002, comparing absolute and relative inequities over time.
Limitations
County income is an ecological SES proxy; the study does not identify a single causal policy that produced the fall-then-rise pattern.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.