Income Inequality, Social Capital, and Health: A New Synthesis

Award Year: 1996	Investigator: Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce Kennedy	Budget: $249,850	Categories: Poverty and Health, Social Determinants of Health
Abstract: Inequalities in health by socioeconomic status (SES) are large, pervasive, persistent, and widening. Most theories attempting to explain them use individual-level indicators of SES such as income, educational attainment, or occupation. In contrast, this project builds on a new hypothesis of unequal distribution of income as a determinant of health. Drs. Kawachi and Kennedy: (1) examine the relationship between income inequality and mortality at different points in time (1960 through 1990) and at different levels of analysis (state, MSA, county, individual); 2) outline a new theory of the production of health through social and political capital and demonstrate linkages between income inequality and varying access to these forms of capital; and 3) develop a conceptual definition of social capital, exploring its role as an intermediary variable between income inequality and mortality.