Journal
SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE
Volume 161, Issue -, Pages 19-26Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.05.028
Keywords
Canada; United States; Race/ethnicity; Welfare state; Health inequalities
Funding
- Canadian Institute for Health Research [120259]
- Canada Research Chair in Population Health Equity from the Government of Canada
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Prior research suggests that racial inequalities in health vary in magnitude across societies. This paper uses the largest nationally representative samples available to compare racial inequalities in health in the United States and Canada. Data were obtained from ten waves of the National Health Interview Survey (n = 162,271,885) and the Canadian Community Health Survey (n = 19,906,131) from 2000 to 2010. We estimated crude and adjusted odds ratios, and risk differences across racial groups for a range of health outcomes in each country. Patterns of racial health inequalities differed across the United States and Canada. After adjusting for covariates, black-white and Hispanic-white inequalities were relatively larger in the United States, while aboriginal-white inequalities were larger in Canada. In both countries, socioeconomic factors did not explain inequalities across racial groups to the same extent. In conclusion, while racial inequalities in health exist in both the United States and Canada, the magnitudes of these inequalities as well as the racial groups affected by them, differ considerably across the two countries. This suggests that the relationship between race and health varies as a function of the societal context in which it operates. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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