[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i4p1179-d319918.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Price of the Ticket: Health Costs of Upward Mobility among African Americans

Author

Listed:
  • Darrell Hudson

    (Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA)

  • Tina Sacks

    (School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Katie Irani

    (Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA)

  • Antonia Asher

    (School of Public Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA)

Abstract
There is a growing literature that has documented diminishing health returns on upward social mobility among Black Americans. Due to historical policies and practices, upward social mobility is often an arduous, isolating process for Black Americans, especially as they navigate predominately white educational and workplace settings. This paper advances the literature in several meaningful and innovative ways. The goal of this paper is to provide a qualitative account of the health costs of upward social mobility and describe how these costs could diminish health returns despite greater levels of socioeconomic resources. Focus groups and surveys were the data collection methods for the study. Inclusion criteria for the study were that respondents identified as African American or Black, were 24 years or older and had completed college. The total sample was 32 college-educated Black men ( n = 12) and women ( n = 20). The mean age for men was 39 (range = 26–50) and 33 years of age (range = 24–59) for women. Key findings highlighted in this paper include (1) hypervisibility and subsequent vigilance; (2) uplift stress; and (3) health costs associated with social mobility. The sum of these stressors is posited to affect multiple health outcomes and elucidate the mechanisms through which socioeconomic returns on health are diminished.

Suggested Citation

  • Darrell Hudson & Tina Sacks & Katie Irani & Antonia Asher, 2020. "The Price of the Ticket: Health Costs of Upward Mobility among African Americans," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-18, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:4:p:1179-:d:319918
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/4/1179/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/4/1179/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Colleen M. Heflin & Mary E. Pattillo, 2002. "Crossing Class Boundaries: Race, Siblings and Socioeconomic Heterogeneity," JCPR Working Papers 252, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    2. Shervin Assari, 2018. "Parental Education Better Helps White than Black Families Escape Poverty: National Survey of Children’s Health," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-14, May.
    3. Williams, D.R., 2003. "The Health of Men: Structured Inequalities and Opportunities," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(5), pages 724-731.
    4. Hicken, Margaret T. & Lee, Hedwig & Hing, Anna K., 2018. "The weight of racism: Vigilance and racial inequalities in weight-related measures," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 157-166.
    5. Bécares, Laia & Nazroo, James & Kelly, Yvonne, 2015. "A longitudinal examination of maternal, family, and area-level experiences of racism on children's socioemotional development: Patterns and possible explanations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 128-135.
    6. Geronimus, A.T. & Hicken, M. & Keene, D. & Bound, J., 2006. ""Weathering" and age patterns of allostatic load scores among blacks and whites in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(5), pages 826-833.
    7. Schulz, A.J. & Gravlee, C.C. & Williams, D.R. & Israel, B.A. & Mentz, G. & Rowe, Z., 2006. "Discrimination, symptoms of depression, and self-rated health among African American women in Detroit: Results from a longitudinal analysis," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(7), pages 1265-1270.
    8. Geronimus, Arline T., 1996. "Black/white differences in the relationship of maternal age to birthweight: A population-based test of the weathering hypothesis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 589-597, February.
    9. Hicken, Margaret T. & Kravitz-Wirtz, Nicole & Durkee, Myles & Jackson, James S., 2018. "Racial inequalities in health: Framing future research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 11-18.
    10. Colen, Cynthia G. & Ramey, David M. & Cooksey, Elizabeth C. & Williams, David R., 2018. "Racial disparities in health among nonpoor African Americans and Hispanics: The role of acute and chronic discrimination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 167-180.
    11. Hudson, Darrell L. & Puterman, Eli & Bibbins-Domingo, Kirsten & Matthews, Karen A. & Adler, Nancy E., 2013. "Race, life course socioeconomic position, racial discrimination, depressive symptoms and self-rated health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 7-14.
    12. Farmer, Melissa M. & Ferraro, Kenneth F., 2005. "Are racial disparities in health conditional on socioeconomic status?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 191-204, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown, 2020. "Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat: Black Men, Masculinity, Faith and Food," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(12), pages 1-13, June.
    2. Edward Adinkrah & Babak Najand & Angela Young-Brinn, 2023. "Race and Ethnic Differences in the Protective Effect of Parental Educational Attainment on Subsequent Perceived Tobacco Norms among US Youth," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-11, January.
    3. Darrell Hudson & Akilah Collins-Anderson & William Hutson, 2023. "Understanding the Impact of Contemporary Racism on the Mental Health of Middle Class Black Americans," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-10, January.
    4. Jenkins, August I.C. & Surachman, Agus & Armendariz, Marina, 2024. "Where I'm Livin’ and How I'm Feelin’: Associations among community stress, gender, and mental-emotional health among Black Americans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    5. Hafifa Siddiq & Babak Najand, 2022. "Immigration Status, Socioeconomic Status, and Self-Rated Health in Europe," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-12, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Colen, Cynthia G. & Ramey, David M. & Cooksey, Elizabeth C. & Williams, David R., 2018. "Racial disparities in health among nonpoor African Americans and Hispanics: The role of acute and chronic discrimination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 167-180.
    2. Shervin Assari & Susan D. Cochran & Vickie M. Mays, 2021. "Money Protects White but Not African American Men against Discrimination: Comparison of African American and White Men in the Same Geographic Areas," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-12, March.
    3. Hudson, Darrell L. & Puterman, Eli & Bibbins-Domingo, Kirsten & Matthews, Karen A. & Adler, Nancy E., 2013. "Race, life course socioeconomic position, racial discrimination, depressive symptoms and self-rated health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 7-14.
    4. Brown, Laura J & Sear, Rebecca, 2020. "Do parenting, reproductive and health traits cluster together in distinct trajectories? Evidence from two UK cohort studies," OSF Preprints r8jvw, Center for Open Science.
    5. Hafifa Siddiq & Babak Najand, 2022. "Immigration Status, Socioeconomic Status, and Self-Rated Health in Europe," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-12, November.
    6. Danielle Shaked & Zachary B Millman & Danielle L Beatty Moody & William F Rosenberger & Hui Shao & Leslie I Katzel & Christos Davatzikos & Rao P Gullapalli & Stephen L Seliger & Guray Erus & Michele K, 2019. "Sociodemographic disparities in corticolimbic structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-21, May.
    7. Chen, Shanting & Mallory, Allen B., 2021. "The effect of racial discrimination on mental and physical health: A propensity score weighting approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    8. Matthew Jay Lyons & Senaida Fernandez Poole & Ross C. Brownson & Rodney Lyn, 2022. "Place Is Power: Investing in Communities as a Systemic Leverage Point to Reduce Breast Cancer Disparities by Race," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-13, January.
    9. Gee, Gilbert & Walsemann, Katrina, 2009. "Does health predict the reporting of racial discrimination or do reports of discrimination predict health? Findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1676-1684, May.
    10. Turner, R. Jay & Thomas, Courtney S. & Brown, Tyson H., 2016. "Childhood adversity and adult health: Evaluating intervening mechanisms," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 114-124.
    11. Gustafsson, Per E. & Hammarström, Anne, 2012. "Socioeconomic disadvantage in adolescent women and metabolic syndrome in mid-adulthood: An examination of pathways of embodiment in the Northern Swedish Cohort," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(10), pages 1630-1638.
    12. Erin Pullen & Carrie Oser, 2017. "Disadvantaged Status and Health Matters Networks among Low-Income African American Women," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-19, September.
    13. Shervin Assari & Shanika Boyce & Mohsen Bazargan & Cleopatra H. Caldwell & Ron Mincy, 2020. "Maternal Education at Birth and Youth Breakfast Consumption at Age 15: Blacks’ Diminished Returns," J, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-11, September.
    14. Myles D. Moody, 2022. "Vicarious Experiences of Major Discrimination and the Life Satisfaction of Black and White Adults from a Community Sample," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 2725-2743, August.
    15. Gillespie, Shannon L. & Anderson, Cindy M., 2018. "Racial discrimination and leukocyte glucocorticoid sensitivity: Implications for birth timing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 114-123.
    16. Shellae Versey, H. & Cogburn, Courtney C. & Wilkins, Clara L. & Joseph, Nakita, 2019. "Appropriated racial oppression: Implications for mental health in Whites and Blacks," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 295-302.
    17. Cerdá, Magdalena & Buka, Stephen L. & Rich-Edwards, Janet W., 2008. "Neighborhood influences on the association between maternal age and birthweight: A multilevel investigation of age-related disparities in health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 2048-2060, May.
    18. Read, Jen'nan Ghazal & Gorman, Bridget K., 2006. "Gender inequalities in US adult health: The interplay of race and ethnicity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1045-1065, March.
    19. Colen, Cynthia G. & Geronimus, Arline T. & Phipps, Maureen G., 2006. "Getting a piece of the pie? The economic boom of the 1990s and declining teen birth rates in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 1531-1545, September.
    20. Carlos Daniel Tavares, 2023. "Perceived Racism and Health Among Black Americans: The Role of Racial Identity as a Moderator Over Time," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(1), pages 21582440231, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:4:p:1179-:d:319918. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.