ArticleDemography2016
A Social History of Disease: Contextualizing the Rise and Fall of Social Inequalities in Cause-Specific Mortality.
Article in Demography, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 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.
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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
54 citing papers in PubMed, 118 citations in OpenAlex.
- Generational variation and life‑course accumulation of social inequalities in all-cause mortality in Germany: a cohort-sequential study.International journal for equity in health · 2026Article
- A quantitative intersectional approach to measuring change in built environment amenities and the association with mortality in U.S. counties.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2026Article
- Potential and challenges for sustainable progress in human longevity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The geography of American longevity: structural determinants of a 20-year life expectancy divide and a federal policy blueprint.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Contextual impact of socio-economic inequalities on health: a case study of COVID-19 mortality among populations with and without diabetes in France.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Visualizing heterogeneous associations: economic capital and adolescent football participation in China: a cross-sectional study using quantile regression with school-level fixed effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Health inequalities in the Nordic countries: A comparative overview and update.Journal of internal medicine · 2025Review
- Stability and Volatility in the Contextual Predictors of Working-Age Mortality in the United States.Journal of health and social behavior · 2025Article
- How does context shape differences and changes in caregivers' engagement in psychosocial stimulation over time? Evidence from a cross-national study.International journal of behavioral development · 2025Article
- Timing of Infection as a Key Driver of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Mortality Rates During the Prevaccine Period.Open forum infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Uncovering the toll of the first three COVID-19 waves: excess mortality and social patterns in Belgium.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2024Article
- Article
- Forecasting Inequalities in Survival to Retirement Age by Socioeconomic Status in Denmark and Sweden.European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2024Article
- Socioeconomic inequalities in cardiovascular disease: a causal perspective.Nature reviews. Cardiology · 2024Review
- Re-examining the social gradient in health: A study of Dutch men, 1850-1984.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Moderation modelling of COVID-19 digital health literacy and sense of coherence across subjective social class and age among university students in Ghana.BMC psychology · 2023Article
- Educational Disparities in Hypertension Prevalence and Blood Pressure Percentiles in the Health and Retirement Study.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- Quantifying the impact of SARS-CoV-2 temporal vaccination trends and disparities on disease control.Science advances · 2023Article
- Waves of inequality: income differences in intensive care due to Covid-19 in Sweden.European journal of public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Fundamental cause theory posits that social inequalities in health arise because of unequal access to flexible resources, including knowledge, money, power, prestige, and beneficial social connections, which allow people to avoid risk factors and adopt protective factors relevant in a particular place. In this study, we posit that diseases should also be put into temporal context. We characterize diseases as transitioning through four stages at a given time: (1) natural mortality, characterized by no knowledge about risk factors, preventions, or treatments for a disease in a population; (2) producing inequalities, characterized by unequal diffusion of innovations; (3) reducing inequalities, characterized by increased access to health knowledge; and (4) reduced mortality/disease elimination, characterized by widely available prevention and effective treatment. For illustration, we pair an ideal-types analysis with mortality data to explore hypothesized incidence rates of diseases. Although social inequalities exist in incidence rates of many diseases, the cause, extent, and direction of inequalities change systematically in relation to human intervention. This article highlights opportunities for further development, specifically highlighting the role of stage duration in maintaining social inequalities in cause-specific mortality.
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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.