Ethnic inequalities in health in later life, 1993–2017: the persistence of health disadvantage over more than two decades

Sarah Stopforth,James Nazroo,Laia Bécares,Dharmi Kapadia

doi:10.1017/s0144686x2100146x

Sarah Stopforth, James Nazroo + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/s0144686x2100146x

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Journal: Ageing & Society	Publication Date: Nov 10, 2021
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Sussex, University of Manchester

Abstract

AbstractEthnic inequalities in health and wellbeing across the early and mid-lifecourse have been well-documented in the United Kingdom. What is less known is the prevalence and persistence of ethnic inequalities in health in later life. There is a large empirical gap focusing on older ethnic minority people in ethnicity and ageing research. In this paper, we take a novel approach to address data limitations by harmonising six nationally representative social survey datasets that span more than two decades. We investigate ethnic inequalities in health in later life, and we examine the effects of socio-economic position and racial discrimination in explaining health inequalities. The central finding is the persistence of stark and significant ethnic inequalities in limiting long-term illness and self-rated health between 1993 and 2017. These inequalities tend to be greater in older ages, and are partially explained by contemporaneous measures of socio-economic position, racism, and discrimination. Future data collection endeavours must better represent older ethnic minority populations and enable more detailed analyses of the accumulation of socio-economic disadvantage and exposure to racism over the lifecourse, and its effects on poorer health outcomes in later life.

Highlights

Ethnic inequalities in health and wellbeing across the early and mid-lifecourse have been well-documented in the United Kingdom (UK) (Nazroo, 2001b)
Ethnic inequalities are well-established into adulthood across a range of health outcomes, in general health measures such as self-rated health and limiting long-term illness (LLTI) (Evandrou, 2000; Harding and Balarajan, 2000; Nazroo, 2001b; Bécares, 2015; Darlington et al, 2015; Evandrou et al, 2016), specific conditions such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes (Bhopal et al, 2002; Nazroo, 2003, 1997), mental health and wellbeing (Wallace et al, 2016), and in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy (Wohland et al, 2015)
We investigate the prevalence of ethnic inequalities in health in later life, and we examine the effects of socio-economic position and experienced racial discrimination in explaining health inequalities

Summary

Introduction

Ethnic inequalities in health and wellbeing across the early and mid-lifecourse have been well-documented in the United Kingdom (UK) (Nazroo, 2001b). The few crosssectional studies which have examined this have observed significant health inequalities for older ethnic minority people compared with the white majority group (Evandrou, 2000; Evandrou et al, 2016; Watkinson et al, 2021), but there is a scarcity of evidence on the persistence of inequalities over time. This is highly problematic, because the increasing population of older ethnic minority people will be a key demographic change over the decades in Britain (see Lievesley, 2010; Victor et al, 2012)

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