Socioeconomic status refers to an individual’s ability to produce and consume resources (Landsbergis, Grzywacz, & LaMontagne, 2014). It is one of the most important determinants of health and is associated with access to material resources, such as adequate housing, safe neighborhoods, healthy food, clean water, clean air, educational opportunities, and control over ones work (Symbaluk & Bereska, 2016). A lack of these material resources can have a direct or indirect impact on ones health and illness. Socioeconomic status affects an individual’s health and illness through job security, adequate nutritious diet, and has an impact on lifestyle behaviors. Lower socioeconomic status is consistently linked with job insecurity (Landsbergis et al., 2014).…
The effects of social class can be felt anywhere. Almost every aspect of society is influenced in some manner by social class. Stephen was considered to be brought up in a high class family so he would have been affected by factors that are influenced by high class upbringing. Physically, Stephens’s social class would have had an influence on his health. Stephen was brought up in a high class family therefore his parents will have been more likely to check he has cleaned his teeth and so on when he was growing up.…
“no one under 55 had died of a heart attack, or showed any signs of heart disease” Curious about this small town’s health, Stewart Wolfe, with the help of colleagues, collected death records and family genealogies to investigate the amazingly low heart rate of this town. Expecting to find a special diet or genes that caused the astonishing health benefit, Wolfe was surprised to see that the reason for the lowered risk of heart disease was the social structure of the town, and their origins of Roseto Valefotore,Italy. “The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.” Many house-holds had three generations living in the same home. This town that overcame the ‘norms’ was an outlier.…
REACTION PAPER- Unnatural Causes The documentary series “Unnatural causes In sickness and In wealth” explores how socio-economic conditions affect population health and how certain communities come together and work together to improve and extend their health and life expectancy. Throughout the series the common denominator remains that the amount of wealth a person has influences their level of health, overall wellness and level of stress in their everyday life. The higher a person is on the Hierarchy level, the more they earn and the less they worry about basic amenities.…
Health is not determined solely by people’s genes but is largely shaped by environmental and socioeconomic factors. In Health and in Wealth, the first episode in the documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, addresses the vast differences between US communities not only on a nationwide range but even at a local scale with a total shift across a single block. As Dr. Troutman notes, “There’s a cultural demarcation in the city where on one side of this particular street, Ninth Street, there’s a tremendous amount of new developments going on, condos rising up. And right across the street is where the public housing projects begin. Every city has a Ninth Street” (Unnatural Causes 2008).…
Unnatural Causes Unnatural Causes is a documentary about the effects of one’s socioeconomic status in health, diseases, life expectancy, and excess death. The film compares the lives of 4 individuals who live in different counsel districts of Louisville, Kentucky. Systems theorists believe individuals, their systems, communities, and environment are all interrelated to achieve better interactions between each other (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2011). Micro, mezzo, and macro systems levels, as well as homeostasis will be discussed to explain the causes of excess death and how to decrease or eliminate excess death. Micro System…
Jason Butler 3/9/17 SOC100 Discussion #8 It is a common problem, especially in American society today that many racial minorities and individuals possessing low social statuses have poor health as well as shorter life expectancies. This is a result of socioeconomic disparities. Due to many factors such as poverty, lack of healthcare, and poor diet, those individuals described above often have poorer health and shorter lives as they are not able to access healthcare thus leading to illnesses in which can get out of control and lead to a shorter life expectancy. Other factors such as poor diet often lead to poor health as those individuals are not able to eat healthy often eating those foods that are cheaper…
Recently researchers have started to discover a correlation between a person’s socioeconomic status and their…
Social Justice/Human Rights The views on an “Open and Just Society” have significantly changed over the years, thanks to Dr. Dorothy Nyswander’s paper The Open Society: Its Implications for Health Educators. Dr. Nyswander proposes four questions throughout her paper, which apply to our health and society in general (Nyswander, 1967). These four questions relate to health because they describe how Dr. Nyswander envisioned the overall health status and society as a whole.…
Coming from my position in life, I often find challenge in analyzing, interpreting, and discussing social class. It weighs on me that I likely bring unfair biases and predispositions to this topic. I am a white, American, educated, athletic male from a family with both parents still together and without many financial troubles. Aside from perhaps a degree from a prestigious University or boat loads of cash, I do not think that I could be more privileged. Although my privilege might sway my ideas on the matter of social class, I am working to remove these biases in order to truly recognize the ways in which the social construct of social class influences the individuals, communities, and institutions that I come in contact with in everyday life.…
There are associations between the materialistic/structural explanation and the cultural behavioural explanation. The cultural explanation suggests that the social distribution of poor health is linked to differences in individual behaviours and to different groups’ attitudes towards their health (Daykin, 2001). The Stroke Foundation of NZ (2010) suggests that people who are subject to a greater degree of disadvantage were estimated to have about a 60% increased risk of stroke when compared with those with the lowest level of disadvantage. Asthana and Halliday (2006) backs this statement up as it states that health-damaging behaviours are more prevalent among the poor than the socially advantaged. Additionally there are also behavioural factors…
The movie In Sickness and in Wealth, gives an eye opening realization to the effect of our health based on our socioeconomic status. It appears to create a domino effect, the lower income you have the greater risk you have for health problems and a shortened life span. The health care system in the United States has many flaws. The United States spends two trillion a year on health care, almost half in the world, yet has one of the lowest life expectancy rates. Today, the top one percent of Americans owns more wealth than the bottom 90% combined (Staff, 2008).…
Workers who are ill or injured are returned to work and therefore continue to make profits for the owners of capital. Marxist believes that inequalities in health are related to how productive people are. The low levels of expenditure on the working class is explained by the presence of social class division throughout society, whereby working class people consistently receive worse treatment across the range of services in housing, education and health (Moore, 2008,…
Social Determinants Social determinants are the conditions in which people are born, where they live, grow, age and work. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of power, money, and resources at local, global, and national levels (Social determinants, 2015). Many factors are considered when determining what affects the health of individuals as well as entire communities. Health is affected by environmental and circumstantial factors. It is largely influenced by income, education level, relationships with friends and family, the environment, state of residence, as well as genetics (Social determinants, 2015).…
Many people see health in different ways, this essay will look at two concepts of health, the biomedical and the social medical, and evaluate them. This will try to give a more rounded look at the approaches, the problems they can show and the things that are not taken into consideration. To be able to do this we first need to be able to define what ‘health’ is. This term can be described in many ways; the English dictionary defines health as “the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigour:” (oxford English dictionary……….). This is a vague definition to an overall understanding of what people believe to be healthy.…