ArticleAnnals of epidemiology2018
Illustrating a "consequential" shift in the study of health inequalities: a decomposition of racial differences in the distribution of body mass.
Article in Annals of epidemiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why Do Black Women Have a Higher Obesity Prevalence Than White Women in the United States?Demography · 2025Article
- Empirical design of population health strategies accounting for the distribution of population health risks.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Beyond the mean: Distributional differences in earnings and mental health in young adulthood by childhood health histories.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- The role of body mass index at diagnosis of colorectal cancer on Black-White disparities in survival: a density regression mediation approach.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Article
- A Scoping Review of Socioeconomic Inequalities in Distributions of Birth Outcomes: Through a Conceptual and Methodological Lens.Maternal and child health journal · 2020Article
- Widening health inequalities between the employed and the unemployed: A decomposition of trends in Canada (2000-2014).PloS one · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeWe present a conceptual introduction to "distributional inequalities"-differences in distributions of risk factors or other outcomes between social groups-as a consequential shift for research on health inequalities. We also review a companion analytical methodology, "distributional decomposition", which can assess the population characteristics that explain distributional inequalities.
methodsUsing the 1999-2012 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we apply statistical decomposition to (a) document gender-specific, black-white inequalities in the distribution of body mass index (BMI) and, (b) assess the extent to which demographic (age), socioeconomic (family income, education), and behavioral predictors (caloric intake, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption) are associated with broader distributional inequalities in BMI.
resultsBlack people demonstrate favorable or no different caloric intake, smoking, or alcohol consumption than whites, but worse levels of physical activity. Racial inequalities extend beyond the obesity threshold to the broader BMI distribution. Demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral characteristics jointly explain more of the distributional inequality among men than women.
conclusionsBlack-white distributional inequalities are present both among men and women, although the mechanisms may differ by gender. The notion of "distributional inequalities" offers an additional purchase for studying social inequalities in health.
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