Beyond Net Worth: Racial Differences in Wealth Portfolios and Black-White Health Inequality across the Life Course

• In Event: 3471 - Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes

Abstract

While a wide body of literature documents associations between total wealth—generally operationalized as net worth—and health, few studies have assessed how different components of wealth, such as housing equity, savings, or stocks and bonds, uniquely relate to health. Further, while evidence documents that wealth portfolios of Blacks and Whites vary drastically, it remains unknown how racial differences in wealth portfolios contribute to patterns of racial health inequality across the life course. Using nationally representative, longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and a variety of analytical techniques, this study provides new insights into the linkages between race, wealth, and health by assessing the relationships between various wealth components and diverse measures of health and further investigating whether and how racial differences in wealth portfolios contribute to the racial patterning of health and disease risk across the life course. Bivariate descriptive statistics document stark racial disparities in health and wealth portfolios. Preliminary results from longitudinal growth curve models indicate that different wealth components have unique and independent associations with health and that racial differences in home equity and savings, in particular, play essential roles in producing divergent patterns of Black-White health disparities across the life course. Findings from this study offer a nuanced view of the complex relationship between race, wealth, and health and provide new insights into how wealth generating policies and interventions can most effectively reduce population health inequality.

Authors

• Lisa A. Keister, Duke University

• Brian Aronson, Duke University