Race and Health Levels

Race and Health Levels
A look a minority health status in the United States

Introduction

Illness can be viewed as a good [note 1] which an individual has no choice in consuming but the consumption of which restricts the consumption and production of other goods. The flu, for example, seemingly strikes at random, and for those who contract it, opportunities for leisure consumption and/or work production are limited. In this vein, as individuals contract diseases, society as a whole suffers due to movement away from the production possibilities frontier. [Define] Thus, health levels among all people in a society are of universal importance.

Health levels among minorities in the United States are additionally important for two reasons. First, there is evidence which has shown that health issues which are originally limited to a minority eventually spread to the majority due to economic links between communities.[source] Perhaps more importantly, however, are the shifting demographics of the United States that indicate that by the year 2060, [source] minorities will outnumber the majority. [source] Thus, if minorities have higher incidence of disease, and lower quality of care, increasingly our society will be faced with the burden of illness consumption at the expense of other goods.

This reality, of course, is only true if race does indeed play an active role in health levels. The exploration of this relationship is dependant on several considerations:

Further, any responsible analysis of the relationship between race and health levels should explore any current policies that address systematic failings and provide recommended policies changes and additions to address deficiencies which societal well-being.

Health has traditionally been an extremely complex subject in which individual choice and random influences coincide to produce unpredictable outcomes. Smoking, for example, contributes to the likelihood of contracting some form of cancer, as does frequent use of dry cleaning services,[source] but these choices alone are not sufficient, nor are they necessary-- some element of chaos is responsible. Thus, it is important to separate out the incidence of disease contraction, the quality of care received once diagnosed with the disease, and the (perhaps immeasurable) quality of care received to prevent contraction of the disease.