The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #46065

Jessica M. Robbins, PhD, Ambulatory Health Services, Philadelphia Department of Public Health, 500 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146, (215) 685-6426, jessica.robbins@phila.gov

At a national level, racial/ethnic inequalities in health and socioeconomic inequalities in health consistently result in higher mortality rates for African Americans than for non-Hispanic whites, and in higher mortality rates for people of lower socioeconomic status. Eliminating these disparities is one of the major national priorities identified in Healthy People 2010. Because vital statistics in the United States include racial data but not socioeconomic data, local mortality rates are frequently calculated for different racial/ethnic groups, but not for different socioeconomic groups. Using 1990 Census Bureau data on census tract-level poverty rates in Philadelphia, we calculated age-adjusted mortality rates using 1999 vital statistics data for women and men by neighborhood poverty level (40+% poor, 20-40% poor, and less than 20% poor), for the city as a whole and for each of its major racial/ethnic groups (African Americans, non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics, and Asians). Mortality rates for residents of high-poverty census tracts were 3 times higher than for residents of low-poverty census tracts among both women and men. Economic disparities were substantial within each of the major racial/ethnic groups, and were greatest among non-Hispanic whites. We also explored the contribution of different causes of death to socioeconomic disparities, and the relative contributions of racial/ethnic disparities within economic categories and differences in the distributions of groups across economic categories to the racial/ethnic inequalities in mortality in Philadelphia. A replicate analysis will be conducted using 2000 Census poverty data when released.

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