RE: Re: Income Inequality and Health

["Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI)" <mbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>I'd say (2). Doesn't racism have effects on health status (through
>>>>judgments
>>>>made in health care, and perhaps through other routes - surely I've read
>>>>of big
>>>>race-based differences in treatment for acute heart problems in the US)?
>>>>Racism
>>>>and race relations in the US do take distinctive forms, and that could
>>>>well
>>>>explain US exceptionalism on the [apparent] Wilkinson effect.

Yes, but Deaton's regression says that the health status of whites (I think
we are talking about males only, BTW) is also worse in SMSA's with high
percent black population.  He also asserts that the health status
differentials cannot be "plausibly" explained by differences in the
provision of health care per se, but I don't think he actually has any
compelling evidence on this last point.  There is no doubt that medical care
had little impact on health differentials in the first half (maybe
three-quarters) of the 20th century.  I'm not so sure this is true for more
recent decades.



As for
(3), if
percent black is knocking out direct measures of income inequality in
the
regression, then even if it were proxying for something else, that
'something
else' is knocking out income inequality, which doesn't suggest support
for the
Wilkinson effect even in the US case.

Fred

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