Following recent econometric developments, we use self-assessed general health on a Likert scale conditioned by several objective determinants to measure health disparity between non-Hispanic Whites and minority groups in the United States. A statistical decomposition analysis is conducted to determine the contributions of socio-demographic and neighborhood characteristics in generating disparities. Whereas, 72% of health disparity between Whites and Blacks is attributable to Blacks’ relatively worse socio-economic and demographic characteristics, it is only 50% for Hispanics and 65% for American Indian Alaska Natives. The role of a number of factors including per capita income and income inequality vary across the groups. Interestingly, “blackness” of a county is associated with better health for all minority groups, but it affects Whites negatively. Our findings suggest that public health initiatives to eliminate health disparity should be targeted differently for different racial/ethnic groups by focusing on the most vulnerable within each group.

中文翻译：

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美国的种族/民族健康差异：分解分析

继最近的计量经济学发展之后，我们使用利克特量表进行自我评估的一般健康状况，该状况由几个客观决定因素决定，以衡量美国非西班牙裔白人与少数族裔之间的健康差异。进行统计分解分析以确定社会人口统计学和邻里特征在产生差异方面的贡献。白人和黑人之间72％的健康差异是由于黑人相对较差的社会经济和人口特征所致，而西班牙裔美国人仅为50％，美洲印第安人阿拉斯加土著人仅为65％。人均收入和收入不平等等许多因素的作用因群体而异。有趣的是，一个县的“黑人”与所有少数民族的健康状况都息息相关，但它会对白人产生负面影响。我们的研究结果表明，消除健康差异的公共卫生举措应针对不同种族/族裔群体，以不同的方式作为目标，重点关注每个群体中最脆弱的人群。