Local Health Expenditures and Inequalities in County Infant Mortality

• In Event: 480 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Health in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Local public health expenditures have been linked to infant mortality, but there is reason to expect that all infants are not equally likely to benefit from these efforts. In this paper, I evaluate the relationship between local public health expenditure and socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality. Drawing on data on local government expenditures in a sample of large U.S. municipalities from 1995-2002, I explore the extent to which health and hospital spending are associated with relative inequalities in county infant mortality rates between mothers with low and high levels of educational attainment. I also compare health spending with other forms of local expenditure, and I conduct separate analyses for black and white infants in order to account for racial variation in the relationship between health expenditure and health inequality. For white mothers, I find that hospital expenditures are negatively associated with educational inequalities in infant mortality, but that other health expenditures are positively associated with inequality. In contrast, local public health expenditures are not significant predictors of educational inequalities in infant mortality rates for black mothers.

Author

• Benjamin Sosnaud, Harvard University