ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
US racial inequality may be as deadly as COVID-19.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Utilization of Race and Ethnicity in Major Epidemiology Journals, 1995-2018: A Systematic Review.American journal of epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Rising Black life expectancy in an era of increased immigration.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Observational
- The Social Division of Care Work Time Over Half a Century.Demography · 2025Article
- Structural inequalities exacerbate infection disparities.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Associations between local COVID-19 policies and anxiety in the USA: a longitudinal digital cohort study.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Cross-sectional Average Length of Life Entropy (European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2024Article
- Stolen Lives: Redress for Slavery's and Jim Crow's Ongoing Theft of Lifespan.The Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences : RSF · 2024Article
- Can't Catch a Break: Intersectional Inequalities at Work.Sociological science · 2024Article
- Article
- A review of mental health disparities during COVID-19: Evidence, mechanisms, and policy recommendations for promoting societal resilience.Development and psychopathology · 2023Review
- Racial/Ethnic Inequity in Transit-Based Spatial Accessibility to COVID-19 Vaccination Sites.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2023Article
- Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Dual-Function Life Expectancy.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Article
- Urban visual intelligence: Uncovering hidden city profiles with street view images.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Missing Americans: Early death in the United States-1933-2021.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Race and Ethnicity, Racism, and Population Health in the United States: The Straightforward, the Complex, Innovations, and the Future.Demography · 2023Review
- Between two pandemics: Older, gay men's experiences across HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.SSM. Qualitative research in health · 2023Article
- Along party Lines: Examining the gubernatorial party difference in COVID-19 mortality rates in U.S. Counties.Preventive medicine reports · 2023Article
- Global Health Equity Requires Global Equity.Health equity · 2023Article
- The Covid-19 pandemic and the expansion of the mortality gap between the United States and its European peers.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a catastrophic increase in US mortality. How does the scale of this pandemic compare to another US catastrophe: racial inequality? Using demographic models, I estimate how many excess White deaths would raise US White mortality to the best-ever (lowest) US Black level under alternative, plausible assumptions about the age patterning of excess mortality in 2020. I find that 400,000 excess White deaths would be needed to equal the best mortality ever recorded among Blacks. For White mortality in 2020 to reach levels that Blacks experience outside of pandemics, current COVID-19 mortality levels would need to increase by a factor of nearly 6. Moreover, White life expectancy in 2020 will remain higher than Black life expectancy has ever been unless nearly 700,000 excess White deaths occur. Even amid COVID-19, US White mortality is likely to be less than what US Blacks have experienced every year. I argue that, if Black disadvantage operates every year on the scale of Whites' experience of COVID-19, then so too should the tools we deploy to fight it. Our imagination should not be limited by how accustomed the United States is to profound racial inequality.
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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.