The Underlying Factors of Racial Inequalities in Health and Healthcare in the United States of America and the United Kingdom = A faji egyenlőtlenségek mögöttes tényezői az egészség és az egészségügy terén az Amerikai Egyesült Államokban és az Egyesült Királyságban

Absztrakt (kivonat)

In this essay I aim to provide an insight into racial inequalities in health and healthcare comparing the United States and the United Kingdom. I formulate my research questions based on the literature in the two countries: What might be the underlying factors commonly referred to by researchers, which drive racial disparities in health and healthcare in the United States of America and the United Kingdom? What differences or similarities can be observed between the two countries concerning health-related inequalities? There are a number of studies, which confirm the existence of racial inequalities in different health outcomes, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, however, the literature is significantly wider in the former. Several factors could account for these disparities, including inequalities in access to certain health-related services, differences in socioeconomic indicators, values and norms, or discrimination. Inequalities in the two observed countries do not always follow the same patterns and may differ across time, age groups, and race groups as well. An explanation for this might be found in the divergence of the healthcare systems, in the diverse ethnic composition of these countries that are a result of their history and current immigration trends, as well as in other country-specific characteristics. Overall, it is hard to generalize the situation of racial minorities, since researchers studying health inequalities are often limited by the poor availability of quality data, and there is still not a wide range of studies in this subject, particularly in Europe. In the first part of the essay, I highlight some racial inequalities in body weight-related health outcomes, then by synthesizing the literature I outline the main arguments that most often occur as reasons for racial disparities in health. Building on these points I conduct an analysis of OECD data related to healthcare, as well as publicly available 2021 Census data in the United Kingdom, more precisely England and Wales, and American Community Survey (ACS) 2022 data in the United States. Analyzing these data makes it possible to compare the broader context regarding health and healthcare of the given countries. Combining these results with race- and ethnicity-related data separately in the two countries illustrates the disparities and corroborates some of the arguments related to socioeconomic determinants, such as education.