No Crystal Stair: the African-American Struggle for Health Equality

• In Event: 055 - Regular Session. Health Policy

Abstract

This paper examines the social forces and government policies that shaped the health of African Americans from Reconstruction to the New Deal. The paper asks: How do government policies affect health and health inequality, and what accounts for those policies? The paper answers these questions by filling three gaps in existing scholarship: first, most health policy scholars focus on health care rather than health status; thus ignoring the health effects of policies relating to labor markets, social welfare provision, education, housing and the criminal justice system; second, scholars have underemphasized the ways in which political institutions shape health policies, and third, scholars of racial incorporation have typically attempted to explain the exclusion and unequal treatment of African Americans, but not broader patterns of class inequality that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities.

Author

• Drew Halfmann, University of California-Davis