Inequality has an impact on our health.
Is Stress from Racism Making Us Sick?
In a recent poll it was found that a large percentage of Americans, despite all the material comforts that our society offers, are not happy. That must be doubly true for minorities.
In separate survey a curious trend was discovered. The overall health of immigrants from the Caribbean deteriorated the longer they stayed in the continental United States.
What is it about life in these United States of America that makes people unhappy and is toxic to their well-being?
Is racism driving us crazy? Is the deprivation of economic and social opportunities to minorities causing us to get sick? What if racial discrimination was treated as a health issue, how would our society change?
According to the documentary, Unnatural Causes on PBS, class and race plays a large factor in the health of human beings. The hierarchical system renders the middle and lower class segments of our society to greater health risks, which, in turn, results in higher health care costs for everyone.
Here are a few aspects of our society that the program highlighted:
Our society is organized in ways that is bad for our health. Although we spend 2 trillion dollars on health care each year we are sicker than other industrialized nations. Generally speaking, the poor and the middle class are less healthy than the rich. The wealth of the top 1% of the population is greater than the bottom 90% combined!
Education is a factor too. College graduates live longer than high school graduates. Education gives people greater access to better paying jobs, which means better neighborhoods and better schools for their kids. Half of American households live at $48,000 a year or below.
The program presents the argument that inequality is unnatural and by design. Depending on where a person lives, their educational level, income and their race their life expectancy can be determined with relative accuracy. The day-to-day lives of low-income people have more stress than the affluent. If you’re on the bottom of society’s gradient range you are likely to be categorized as an “excess death” when you die. People are dying earlier and at a greater rate than those at the top of the ladder.
Lower and middle class individuals believe that, in increasing degrees, they have no control over the stressors of their lives. The constant, unrelenting stress of economic insecurity and social subordination results in higher rates of diseases, accelerated aging and early deaths.
Stress also affects children. When a human being is under stress his brain produces a hormone called Cortisol. Too much Cortisol in the blood stream over an extended period of time can interfere a child’s brain development.
While the situation is bad for Whites it is worst for Blacks regardless of income. African-Americans fare worst than their white counterparts. (A black engineer earning a six figure income is likely to die earlier than her White counterpart, who is the same age.) The Black community has 83,000 excess deaths a year.
Yes, the picture is bleak for the bottom 90% of Americans, but there is hope. Changes in governmental policy can alter the direction of the growing health care gap. In other first-world countries where wealth is more evenly distributed, the low and middle class live longer and are healthier.
www.unnaturalcauses.org
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