The Wilkenson is excellent, and represents a growing body of research on the negative association between income inequality and morbidity and mortality. Wilkenson makes a nice connection between the social stresses created by poverty and low social status and biological disfunction. It is a good complement to the largely population-based research on the subject. The income inequality research is a subset of a much larger, and growing, body of work on the negative relationship between socioeconomic status and morbidity and mortality, including personal violence. The American Journal of Public Health devoted its September, 1997 issue to social class and health, and the August 15, 1997 issue of Science has an interesting piece by Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, on neighborhood violence, SES, and social protective factors for homicide. Marxists are probably most aware of the role of poverty in fostering social forms of violence. For personal violence, low SES has a well-established impact on the incidences and severity of intimate partner violence, child abuse and neglect, and youth violence. Increasing income has also been shown to be protective for future (personal) violence for persons at risk, such as children witnessing parental violence who may or may not have violence intimate relationships in the future. A note of caution, the role of economics in intimate partner violence must be examined in a way that addresses the way in which market work roles impact the relative power of abuser and abused. Some earlier work posited that which ever spouse earned the most income would use their higher status to wield control over their partner. In other words, if a married woman earned twice as much as her husband, she would have the decisive decision-making authority in the family. This is certainly not the case, women who earn more than their working-class husbands are generally at greater risk for IPV than women who do not earn as much as their husbands. A good example of work in this area is Karen Pyke, "Women's Employment As a Gift or Burden?: Marital Power Across Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage," in Gender & Society, v8(1), March 1994, pp. 73-91. I am currently working on a review paper of the SES and personal violence literature. I will share it with others when it is done. Jeff ---------- From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:106] Poverty and illness Date: Thursday, July 02, 1998 1:35PM Life & Death on the Social Ladder HELEN EPSTEIN July 16, 1998 BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality by Richard G. Wilkinson 255 pages, $75.00 (hardcover), $20.99 (paperback) published by Routledge Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity, and the Reconstruction of Working Life by Robert Karasek and Töres Theorell 381 pages, $16.00 (paperback) published by Basic Books Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping by Robert M. Sapolsky 368 pages, $14.95 (paperback) published by W.H. Freeman The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease by Stewart Wolf and John G. Bruhn 192 pages, $21.95 (paperback) published by Transaction
[PEN-L:107] RE: Poverty and illness
Fellows, Jeffrey Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:34:00 -0400charset="iso-8859-1"