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WiSe 22/23: Health and Social Inequality

Jan Paul Heisig

Kommentar

People with low education, income, or occupational attainment live their lives in worse health and die younger than their counterparts with higher “socio-economic status”. These social inequalities in health persist even in the most advanced and generous welfare states. But how can they be measured and described? Does socio-economic disadvantage cause poor health (“social causation”)? Or is it the other way round, that is, is socio-economic disadvantage a consequence rather than a cause of health problems (“health selection”)? Which processes drive the potential effect of socio-economic disadvantage on health and how can we investigate them empirically? How does the magnitude of health inequalities vary across European countries, and can we identify promising policies for reducing them?

These and related questions will be at the center of this seminar. The first part of the course covers conceptual and measurement-related issues and provides a general introduction to key explanatory frameworks, including the literature on social determinants of health, life course models of health and health inequalities, and social-biological research on how inequality “gets under the skin”. The second part of the course discusses selected specific explanations for health inequalities (e.g., health behaviors, differential access to health care, neighborhoods and environmental quality). The third and last part focuses on cross-national variation in health inequalities across Europe. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Preparatory readings (not required):

Bartley, Mel. 2016. Health Inequality: An Introduction to Concepts, Theories and Methods. Second Edition. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Berkman, Lisa F., Ichiro Kawachi, and M. Maria Glymour. 2014. Social Epidemiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Mackenbach, Johan P. 2019. Health Inequalities: Persistence and Change in European Welfare States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schließen

16 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mi, 10:00 - 12:00 16 Termine

Mi, 19.10.2022 10:00 - 12:00

Dozenten:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jan Paul Heisig