MPC Member Publications

This database contains a listing of population studies publications written by MPC Members. Anyone can add a publication by an MPC student, faculty, or staff member to this database; new citations will be reviewed and approved by MPC administrators.

Full Citation

Title: Structural Racism and Quantitative Causal Inference: A Life Course Mediation Framework for Decomposing Racial Health Disparities

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2022

ISSN: 2150-6000

DOI: 10.1177/00221465211066108

PMID: 35001689

Abstract: Quantitative studies of racial health disparities often use static measures of self-reported race and conventional regression estimators, which critics argue is inconsistent with social-constructivist theories of race, racialization, and racism. We demonstrate an alternative counterfactual approach to explain how multiple racialized systems dynamically shape health over time, examining racial inequities in cardiometabolic risk in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. This framework accounts for the dynamics of time-varying confounding and mediation that is required in operationalizing a “race” variable as part of a social process (racism) rather than a separable, individual characteristic. We decompose the observed disparity into three types of effects: a controlled direct effect (“unobserved racism”), proportions attributable to interaction (“racial discrimination”), and pure indirect effects (“emergent discrimination”). We discuss the limitations of counterfactual approaches while highlighting how they can be combined with critical theories to quantify how interlocking systems produce racial health inequities.

Url: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35001689/

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Graetz, Nick; Boen, Courtney E.; Esposito, Michael H.

Periodical (Full): Journal of health and social behavior

Issue: 2

Volume: 63

Pages: 232-249

Countries:

IPUMS NHGIS NAPP IHIS ATUS Terrapop