Classes, social

Pukkala, E. (1995). Cancer risk by social class and occupation. A survey of 109 000 cancer cases among Finns of working age. Contributions to Epidemiology and Biostatistics, vol. 7, Kargeg Basel. 

Bellinger DC, Leviton A, Watemaux C, et al. 1988. Low-level lead exposure, social class, and infant development. Neurotoxicol Teratol 10 497-503. 

The results regarding socioeconomic gradients undermines the hypothesis that the principal social class influence on health is material deprivation. In fact, the social class gradient in health cuts deeply into the affluent middle classes. The implication is that the conditions under which people live can affect human health directly, and not only through material deprivation. Early childhood experience, one s place in the social environment, and the experiences of daily life must be powerful determinants of the length and healthfulness of life (Kelly et al., 1997, p. 438). 

If all this is correct, then there must be some process of biological embedding wherein life experiences condition individual biological responses, which lead to systematic differences in resilience and vulnerability to disease across the range of social class experience. 

George Kaplan has shown that US states with greater inequality have higher rates of violence, more disability, more people without health insurance, less investment in education and literacy, and poorer educational outcomes, all of which he calls structural characteristics. Moreover, the socioenvironmental characters of population areas are importantly related to the mortality rates, independent of the characters of individuals. In addition, personal and socioeconomic risk factors cluster together in areas of low income and high mortality. In a thorough local study of Alameda County, California, Kaplan examined parts of the pathways linking social class and mortality. His basic claim is that health inequality is correlated to social instability, which is in turn correlated to the lack of investment in structural characteristics, such as education, proximity of healthful food outlets, pharmacies, accessibility of transportation, etc. 

Such longitudinal studies could show how social class factors influence health throughout the life cycle, and motivate investigations into the biological pathways linking class and health, e.g. the National Population Health Survey in Canada, begun in 1994. 

Kaplan, G. A. (1996), People and places Contrasting perspectives on the association between social class and health, International Journal of Health Services, 26, 507-519. 

Implications for Practice. Time-to-degree in STEM fields must be shortened. The U.S. can make STEM career prospects more attractive to its citizens by increasing the number and size of stipends available from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies. Since these awards are limited to U.S. citizens, they represent a strategic tool for differentiating U.S. citizens from non-citizens (Freeman, 2004). If the gap is to be eliminated, the disparities in educational opportunities associated with social class and race, will have to be eliminated beginning at preschool. This is critical to increase the representation of African American STEM careers. 

Oakes, J., Ormseth, T. H., Bell, R. M., Camp, P. (1990). Multiplying inequities The effects of race, social class, and tracking on opportunities to learn mathematics and science. Santa Monica, CA RAND. (ERIC ED329615). 

Some disease states or trial conditions militate in favour of a high placebo response rate and lend support for the inclusion of placebo in a comparative trial. These include long treatment periods, previous treatments and response to them, innate characteristics of the study subjects (e.g. social class, educational level and personality t)rpe), influence of medical staff, environment and supervision during the trial, appearance and taste of trial drugs, and presence (or absence) of imwanted pharmacological effects. 

Any particular system may contain certain fixed biases. In some of the US systems, patients may be predominantly of particular age groups, of particular social classes or in other ways atypical of the total population. 

A major benefit of water fluoridation to children is that it reduces disparities between socio-economic groups [133,134], Children in lower socio-economic groups tend to suffer more severely from dental caries, and though the reasons for this are not clear, the result has been confirmed in many parts of the world. Children in these groups therefore benefit enormously from fluoridation of the water supply and in areas where the water supply is fluoridated, the differences in dental caries experience between the social classes are much less than in non-fluoridated areas [135],... 

See L. Holmstrom, D. Karp, and P. Gray, Why Laundry, Not Hegel Social Class, the Transition to College, and Pathways to Adulthood, Symbolic Interaction 24 (2002) 437-462 D. Karp et al., Leaving Home for College. ... 

The illness variables that were predictive of poor outcome all reflected severity of illness. They included more severe panic and agoraphobic symptoms, psychiatric hospitalization, and longer duration of illness. The best prognostic indicators were the severity of the illness and its duration at the time of first assessment. Comorbid depression was also associated with poorer outcome. A number of environmental variables were also predictive of poor outcome separation from a parent by death or divorce, high interpersonal sensitivity, low social class, and unmarried marital status. 

Throughout the world, the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is about 1%. Although the prevalence is slightly higher in the lower socioeconomic classes, data from a number of countries indicate that the social class distribution of the parents of schizophrenic probands is similar to that of the general population ( 16,17 and 18). This supports the social drift hypothesis, which postulates that the increased concentration of patients with schizophrenia in the lower socioeconomic stratum is the result of their impaired functioning. 

Goldberg EM, Morrison SL. Schizophrenia and social class. BrJ Psychiatry 1963 109 785-802. 

Western ethics may also involve an attenuation of the ego, but in general as means rather than as an end, and it never pursues this to the limit. The renunciating of one s attachments is a value in the West, but it exists as a means to help or serve others or God better (one distributes one s worldly goods to the poor ) not, as is the case in Buddhism, as a direct means to achieve the absence of suffering. The individual may also be devalued in comparison with the social class of which he is a member, but the Buddhist will retort that in fact such an individual does not exist, that he is merely an illusion. Humility, as when one says that the self is small when compared with God, is largely a way of increasing God s stature by relying upon a very resilient self for support. In fact, a Buddhist will reply, none of that exists, neither God nor self (or, more precisely, there is undoubtedly no God for the theravada Buddhist and there is definitely no self for all Buddhists). 

The beneficial protective effects of fluoride are obviously only available to those who use it and recent studies have shown that there are substantial variations, both geographically and by social class, in rates of toothpaste use (Davies and Hawley, 1995). 

Boggild H, Suadicani P, Hein HO, Gyntelberg F. Shift work, social class, and ischaemic heart disease in middle aged and elderly men a 22 year follow up in the Copenhagen male study. Occup Environ Med 1999 56(9) 640-645. 

The consumption of illicit drugs is a growing social and health problem which involves people of different ages and social classes all over the world. This phenomenon has pushed the research in analytical and forensic toxicology toward a fast evolution the development of even more sophisticated analytical techniques with better performances, reduced analysis time, and better knowledge of the biological matrices. 

Elwood JM, Whitehead SM, Davison J, Stewart M, Galt M (1990) Malignant melanoma in England Risk associated with naevi, freckles, social class, hair colour, and sunburn. Int J Epidemiol, 19 801-810. 

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