This article in The New York Times is about the relationship of health and social status. A few economists offer words of caution, and here, I tend to agree with them, there seem to be too many confounding issues. Many of the points and counter-points seem to hint at so many other potentional follow up questions, that perhaps the article should have been presented as a list of bullets. For example:
How would one explain what is known as the “Hispanic paradox,” the fact that Hispanics have lower than average rates of chronic illness than whites in the United States even though many live in relatively poorer social and economic conditions? “There has been no real attempt to control for all of those things at the same time,” he said.
In other words, Hispanics might measure status in the context of their relatively deprived social environment. Anyway, a lot of stuff to argue about-I hope someone doesn’t use this to make the case that poor people should be segregated and sealed away for their own good health!
Posted by razib at 02:19 PM