ArticlePLoS medicine2008
The fall and rise of US inequities in premature mortality: 1960-2002.
Article in PLoS medicine, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 85 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
85 citing papers in PubMed, 243 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Does a Rising Median Income Lift All Birth Weights? County Median Income Changes and Low Birth Weight Rates Among Births to Black and White Mothers.The Milbank quarterly · 2022Article
- A US State Index of Successful Aging: Differences Between States and Over Time.The Milbank quarterly · 2022Article
- Reflection on modern methods: statistical, policy and ethical implications of using age-standardized health indicators to quantify inequities.International journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- From convergence to divergence: Lifespan variation in US states, 1959-2017.SSM - population health · 2021Article
- Inequality in mortality between Black and White Americans by age, place, and cause and in comparison to Europe, 1990 to 2018.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Welfare Chauvinism, Populist Radical Right Parties and Health Inequalities Comment on "A Scoping Review of Populist Radical Right Parties' Influence on Welfare Policy and its Implications for Population Health in Europe".International journal of health policy and management · 2021Article
- Spatial and temporal inequalities in mortality in the USA, 1968-2016.Health & place · 2021Article
- Modeling Community Health with Areal Data: Bayesian Inference with Survey Standard Errors and Spatial Structure.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
25 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDebates exist as to whether, as overall population health improves, the absolute and relative magnitude of income- and race/ethnicity-related health disparities necessarily increase-or decrease. We accordingly decided to test the hypothesis that health inequities widen-or shrink-in a context of declining mortality rates, by examining annual US mortality data over a 42 year period. METHODS AND
findingsUsing US county mortality data from 1960-2002 and county median family income data from the 1960-2000 decennial censuses, we analyzed the rates of premature mortality (deaths among persons under age 65) and infant death (deaths among persons under age 1) by quintiles of county median family income weighted by county population size. Between 1960 and 2002, as US premature mortality and infant death rates declined in all county income quintiles, socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in premature mortality and infant death (both relative and absolute) shrank between 1966 and 1980, especially for US populations of color; thereafter, the relative health inequities widened and the absolute differences barely changed in magnitude. Had all persons experienced the same yearly age-specific premature mortality rates as the white population living in the highest income quintile, between 1960 and 2002, 14% of the white premature deaths and 30% of the premature deaths among populations of color would not have occurred.
conclusionsThe observed trends refute arguments that health inequities inevitably widen-or shrink-as population health improves. Instead, the magnitude of health inequalities can fall or rise; it is our job to understand why.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.