Inequality in Process: Income and Heterogeneous Educational Health Gradients Among Blacks and Whites in the USA

Abstract

Though considerable research demonstrates that non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites in the USA vary in how much their health improves from educational attainment, empirical work that explains why these populations arrive at unequal returns to education is sparse. In this study, to flesh out our understanding of how heterogeneous educational gradients arise among racial populations in the USA, I examine how income—a crucial mediator of the education–health association—contributes to racially disparate health returns to college. In particular, I compare how the association among college completion and health status would manifest across blacks and white subpopulations if income were factored out of the underlying education–health generative process. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 7222) and sequential g-estimation for this investigation. Results demonstrate that income plays a larger role in mediating the association among college completion and health status for blacks and, as such, that sizable racial differences in the health benefits of college persist after controlling for income.