Toward understanding the association of socioeconomic status and health: a new challenge for the biopsychosocial approach.

The association of socioeconomic status (SES) with morbidity and mortality is a ubiquitous finding in the health literature. One of the principal challenges for biobehavioral researchers is understanding the mechanisms that link SES with health outcomes. This article highlights possible pathways by which SES may influence health. It also provides a discussion of sociodemographic and geographical modifiers of the SES-health relationship and offers several potentially fruitful directions for future research.

[1]  H. Tyroler,et al.  Hypertension: effects of social class and racial admixture: the results of a cohort study in the black population of Charleston, South Carolina. , 1977, American journal of public health.

[2]  S. Folkman,et al.  Socioeconomic inequalities in health. No easy solution. , 1993 .

[3]  R. Gillum.  Overweight and obesity in black women: a review of published data from the National Center for Health Statistics. , 1987, Journal of the National Medical Association.

[4]  N. Anderson,et al.  Hostility patterns and health implications: correlates of Cook-Medley Hostility Scale scores in a national survey. , 1991, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[5]  A. M. Peck,et al.  Childhood environment, intergenerational mobility, and adult health--evidence from Swedish data. , 1992, Journal of epidemiology and community health.

[6]  D. Carroll,et al.  Socio-economic health inequalities: Their origins and implications , 1993 .

[7]  R. Farley,et al.  The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America. , 1988 .

[8]  Y. Ben-Shlomo,et al.  Deprivation in infancy or in adult life: which is more important for mortality risk? , 1991, The Lancet.

[9]  M A Hlatky,et al.  Prognostic importance of social and economic resources among medically treated patients with angiographically documented coronary artery disease. , 1992, JAMA.

[10]  R. Jeffery,et al.  Socioeconomic status differences in health behaviors related to obesity: the Healthy Worker Project. , 1991, International journal of obesity.

[11]  E. O. Wright,et al.  Marxist Class Categories and Income Inequality , 1977 .

[12]  S. Shea.  Community health, community risks, community action. , 1992, American journal of public health.

[13]  Y. Liao,et al.  Blood pressure and educational level among factory workers in Ibadan, Nigeria. , 1991, Journal of human hypertension.

[14]  A. Kriska,et al.  Physical activity behaviors in lower and higher socioeconomic status populations. , 1991, American journal of epidemiology.

[15]  T. Pincus,et al.  Most chronic diseases are reported more frequently by individuals with fewer than 12 years of formal education in the age 18-64 United States population. , 1987, Journal of chronic diseases.

[16]  A. Stunkard,et al.  Socioeconomic status and obesity: a review of the literature. , 1989, Psychological bulletin.

[17]  Race, education and prevalence of hypertension. , 1977, American journal of epidemiology.

[18]  S. Fortmann,et al.  Social class disparities in risk factors for disease: eight-year prevalence patterns by level of education. , 1990, Preventive medicine.

[19]  Starfield,et al.  Child health and social status. , 1982, Pediatrics.

[20]  N. Keenan,et al.  Socioeconomic and behavioral correlates of body mass index in black adults: the Pitt County Study. , 1992, American journal of public health.

[21]  M. Collen,et al.  Social class and racial differences in blood pressure. , 1974, American Journal of Public Health.

[22]  C. V. Chapin.  DEATHS AMONG TAXPAYERS AND NON-TAXPAYERS INCOME TAX, PROVIDENCE, 1865. , 1924, American journal of public health.

[23]  R. Kessler,et al.  Stress, social status, and psychological distress. , 1979, Journal of health and social behavior.

[24]  R. E. Steele.  Relationship of race, sex, social class, and social mobility to depression in normal adults. , 1978, The Journal of social psychology.

[25]  I. Luckey.  : American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1995 .

[26]  A. Hawkins,et al.  Attitudes to tracing and notifying contacts of people with HIV infection. , 1992, BMJ.

[27]  A. Dyer,et al.  The Relationship of Education to Blood Pressure: Findings on 40,000 Employed Chicagoans , 1976, Circulation.

[28]  M. Heckler,et al.  Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Black and Minority Health. , 1986, MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report.

[29]  M. Haan,et al.  Poverty and health: Prospective evidence for the Alameda County Study , 1987 .

[30]  E. Legome.  Socioeconomic inequalities in health: No easy solution , 1994 .

[31]  D. Belle.  The Impact of Poverty on Social Networks and Supports , 1983 .

[32]  J. Coyne,et al.  Psychosocial predictors of depression. Prospective evidence from the human population laboratory studies. , 1987, American journal of epidemiology.

[33]  S. Kumanyika.  Obesity in black women. , 1987, Epidemiologic reviews.

[34]  P. Remington,et al.  Smoking by blacks and whites: socioeconomic and demographic differences. , 1988, American journal of public health.

[35]  J. Kaprio,et al.  A prospective study of psychological and socioeconomic characteristics, health behavior and morbidity in cigarette smokers prior to quitting compared to persistent smokers and non-smokers. , 1988, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[36]  M. McNeilly,et al.  Autonomic reactivity and hypertension in blacks: a review and proposed model. , 1991, Ethnicity & disease.

[37]  M. Chesney,et al.  Cook‐Medley Hostility scale and subsets: relationship to demographic and psychosocial characteristics in young adults in the CARDIA study. , 1991, Psychosomatic medicine.

[38]  C. Wortman,et al.  Coping with Role Overload , 1991 .

[39]  David R. Williams.  Socioeconomic Differentials in Health: A Review and Redirection , 1990 .

[40]  Philip M. Hauser,et al.  Differential Mortality in the United States: A Study in Socioeconomic Epidemiology. , 1974 .

[41]  J. Fries,et al.  Gender and race differences in the correlation between body mass and education in the 1971-1975 NHANES I. , 1992, Journal of epidemiology and community health.

[42]  B. Dohrenwend,et al.  Social status and stressful life events. , 1973, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[43]  D. Carroll,et al.  Socioeconomic differentials in mortality: evidence from Glasgow graveyards. , 1992, BMJ.

[44]  N. Krieger,et al.  Women and social class: a methodological study comparing individual, household, and census measures as predictors of black/white differences in reproductive history. , 1991, Journal of epidemiology and community health.

[45]  R. Kessler,et al.  Socioeconomic status differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events. , 1990, Journal of health and social behavior.

[46]  Flávio Penteado Sampaio.  Class and class conflict in an industrial society , 1961 .

[47]  R. Williams,et al.  Hostility, CHD incidence, and total mortality: a 25-year follow-up study of 255 physicians. , 1983, Psychosomatic medicine.

[48]  J. Stern.  Social Mobility and the Interpretation of Social Class Mortality Differentials , 1983, Journal of Social Policy.

[49]  D. Baker,et al.  Income distribution and life expectancy. , 1992, BMJ.

[50]  George A. Kaplan,et al.  Socioeconomic Status and Health: Old Observations and New Thoughts , 1989 .

[51]  D. Jones,et al.  Social class mortality differentials: artefact, selection or life circumstances? , 1985, Journal of epidemiology and community health.

[52]  J. Salonen,et al.  Childhood and adult socioeconomic status as predictors of mortality in Finland , 1994, The Lancet.

[53]  J. White,et al.  SERUM-α-HYDROXYBUTYRATE LEVELS IN SICKLE-CELL DISEASE AND SICKLE-CELL CRISIS , 1978, The Lancet.

[54]  Robert V. Robinson,et al.  Class as Conceived by Marx and Dahrendorf: Effects on Income Inequality and Politics in the United States and Great Britain , 1979 .

[55]  J. Salonen,et al.  Association between plasma fibrinogen concentration and five socioeconomic indices in the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. , 1993, American journal of epidemiology.

[56]  J L Kelsey,et al.  The measurement of social class in epidemiology. , 1988, Epidemiologic reviews.

[57]  N. Krieger.  Racial and gender discrimination: risk factors for high blood pressure? , 1990, Social science & medicine.

[58]  J. LaDou.  Women workers: international issues. , 1993, Occupational medicine.

[59]  I. Waldron.  Effects of Labor Force Participation on Sex Differences in Mortality and Morbidity , 1991 .

[60]  L. Kuller,et al.  Factors associated with hypertension in Nigerian civil servants. , 1992, Preventive medicine.

[61]  P. Remington,et al.  Sociodemographic characteristics of cigarette smoking initiation in the United States. Implications for smoking prevention policy. , 1990, JAMA.

[62]  J. Feldman,et al.  National trends in educational differentials in mortality. , 1989, American journal of epidemiology.

[63]  S. Arber,et al.  Women's lung cancer mortality, socio-economic status and changing smoking patterns. , 1991, Social science & medicine.

[64]  J. Rotter,et al.  children's feelings of personal control as related to social class and ethnic group1 , 1963 .

[65]  D. C. Olivier,et al.  Depression and anxiety in relation to social status. A prospective epidemiologic study. , 1991, Archives of general psychiatry.

[66]  S. Folkman,et al.  Socioeconomic Status and Health , 1994 .

[67]  M G Marmot,et al.  Social/economic status and disease. , 1987, Annual review of public health.

[68]  W. Hadden,et al.  The increasing disparity in mortality between socioeconomic groups in the United States, 1960 and 1986. , 1993, The New England journal of medicine.

[69]  J. Cauley,et al.  Physical activity by socioeconomic status in two population based cohorts. , 1991, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[70]  A. Antonovsky,et al.  Social class, life expectancy and overall mortality. , 1967, The Milbank Memorial Fund quarterly.

[71]  R. Kessler,et al.  A new perspective on the relationships among race, social class, and psychological distress. , 1986, Journal of health and social behavior.

[72]  R. Kessler.  A disaggregation of the relationship between socioeconomic status and psychological distress. , 1982, American sociological review.

[73]  Gower Street,et al.  Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall II study , 1991, The Lancet.

[74]  L H Kuller,et al.  Educational attainment and behavioral and biologic risk factors for coronary heart disease in middle-aged women. , 1989, American journal of epidemiology.

[75]  J. House,et al.  Age, socioeconomic status, and health. , 1990, The Milbank quarterly.

[76]  J. Rotter,et al.  CHILDREN'S FEELINS OF PERSONAL CONTROL AS RELATED TO SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNIC GROUP. , 1963, Journal of personality.

[77]  Van Horn,et al.  Locus of control , 1973 .

[78]  J. Sobal.  Obesity and socioeconomic status: a framework for examining relationships between physical and social variables. , 1991, Medical anthropology.

[79]  J. Goldberg,et al.  Psychosocial influences on mortality after myocardial infarction. , 1984, The New England journal of medicine.