SOCI 365 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Food Desert, Saturated Fat, Environmental Degradation
5 May 2018
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Lecture 17 – February 15th
Intersectionality’s and Social Stratification
Stratified Health
• Stratification – or how people are positioned within society
• Stratified health – the unequal distribution of health and illness
• Health is stratified by class
o This is true for individuals, groups and societies
▪ Growing gap between the rich and the poor worldwide
▪ Countries with greater income equality have greater life expectancies and better
health outcomes
• What is class?
o Must distinguish mediators of various aspects of socio-economic status
▪ Income, wealth, education, employment
• Some of the ways class can impact health
o Absence or presence of resrouces, social capital
o Employment opportunities: more dangerous, illness-producing
o Early life – life course effects
o Neighborhood effects
▪ Environmental degradation
▪ Higher concentration of violence or fear of violence
▪ Less access to protective factors like outdoor spaces for exercise, healthy foods,
food deserts
What is a Neighborhood?
• Bounded by physical space, separated from – but related to – other physical spaces
• Subjective/psychological space
• Neighborhood effects
o Compositional: aggregated characteristics of individuals
o Contextual: physical and social characteristics of a location
o Collective: social, cultural, historical characteristics of a place
• How do neighborhoods affect health?
o Diet and exercise
▪ Food deserts
▪ Reduced or no access to fresh produce
▪ Less availability of large markets
▪ Residents of high income neighborhoods consume more fruits, veggies, fish, less eat,
saturated fat, cholesterol
• Segregation, SES, and health
o Why is there a race and SES link?
o Segregation
o Pathways
▪ Segregation segregated schools limited education opportunity
▪ Employment
o Impact on health
▪ Poor housing
▪ Less transportation, police, municipal services
▪ More crime, noise, less cleanliness
▪ Targeted ads, higher costs
▪ Poorer medical care
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