Lecture 9.2-Inequalities in risk exposure to mortality and morbidity

Demographers take on mortality and morbidity differentials by gender, race, and class.

Discusses the initial and revised theories of the demographic and epidemiological transition (ET). Examines the mortality transition in the US in three time periods; frontier, rural, and urban differentials in mortality; and morbidity and mortality differentials across class, race, and gender. Addresses patterns of land use and occupancy resulting in segregation and hypersegregation.

A. Initial version of ET-Changing hit parade of major killers.

Abdel R. Omran. 1971. The epidemiologic transition. A theory of epidemiology of population change. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49:509-538.

B. Revised version of ET-

Richard G. Rodgers and Robert Hackenberg. 1987. Extending epidemiological transition theory: A new stage. Social Biology 34 (3-4): 234-243.

Sulaiman M. Bah. 1995. Quantitative approaches to detect the fourth stage of the epidemiologic transition. Social Biology 42 (1-2):141-148.

C. Mortality transition in the United States

1. Time periods (prior to 1900, 1900-1950, post 1950

S.L.N.Rao. 1973. "On long term mortality trends in the United States, 1850-1968." Demography 10,3 (August): 405-419. <http://www.jstor.org>
above article

2. Frontier, rural, urban differentials

Catherine Hofer Levison, Donald W. Hastings, and Jerry N. Harrison. 1981. "The epidemiologic transition in a frontier town: Manti, Utah, 1849-1977." American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol 56 No. 1 (September): 83-93.

Katherine A. Lynch, Geraldine P. Mineau, and Douglas L. Anderton. 1985. "Estimates of infant mortality on the western frontier." Historical Methods 18,4 (Fall): 155-164.

Paul H. Price. 1954. "Trends in mortality differentials in the United States." Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 35,4: 255-263.

3. Class, race, gender mortality differentials.

Aaron Antonovsky. 1967. "Social class, life expectancy, and overall mortality." Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly XLV, 2, Part 1: 31-73.

Richard G. Rogers. 1992. "Living and dying in the U.S.A.: Sociodemographic determinants of death among blacks and whites."Demography 29,2 (May): 287-303. Above article

Robert A. Hummer. 1996. "Black-white differences in health and mortality: A review and conceptual model." The Sociological Quarterly 37, 1:105-125.

D. Patterns of land use and occupancy-Urbanization (concentration), suburbanization (deconcentration), residential segregation, and hypersegregation

Daniel T. Lichter. 1985. "Racial concentration and segregation across counties, 1950-1980." Demography 22,4 (Nov.): 603-609. Above article

Douglas S. Massey. 1979. "Residential segregation of Spanish Americans in United States urban areas."Demography 16,4: 553-563. (Desegregation for Latinos increases as duration of residence increases and lessens for each successive generation, i.e., foreign born to native born, second generation, etc.) Above article

Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. 1989. "Hypersegregation in U.S. metropolitan areas: Black and Hispanic segregation along five dimensions." Demography 26,3 (August): 373-391. Above article

Mark Schneider and Thomas Phelan. 1993. "Black suburbanization in the 1980s." Demography 30,2 (May): 269-279. Above article

Douglas Massey, A. Gross, and K. Shibuya. 1994. "Migration, segregation, and the geographic concentration of poverty." American Sociological Review 59: 425-445. Above article

Note urbanization + hypersegregation also associated with inequalities in wealth. Note differences in American apartheid (quasi-caste-K. Davis) vs generational assimilation model.