Regional Cultures and Mortality in America

Examines how state government policies and their historic beginnings have present-day effects on their residents' political lives and on population health, especially for marginalized groups.

Stephen J. Kunitz (Author)

9781107079632, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 December 2014

265 pages, 73 b/w illus. 1 map 50 tables
24 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'Stephen Kunitz has presented a thought-provoking book that engages history, public health, and economics … Scholars will certainly continue to think about the ways in which regional variation informs how people die, and therefore with an eye for helping people live.' Richard M. Mizelle, Jr, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Across the contiguous 48 states, populations in states with more activist civic cultures have lower mortality than states that do not follow this model. Several different factors can be pointed to as causes for this discrepancy - net income, class inequality, and the history of settlement in each of the different states and regions. These observations are true of Non-Hispanic Whites and African Americans but not of American Indians, and Hispanics, neither of which is fully integrated into the state political culture and economy in which it resides. In Regional Cultures and Mortality in America, the struggles these various populations face in regard to their health are explored in terms of where they reside.

Part I. The National Perspective: 1. Institutions, income, and mortality in the United States
2. Institutions and the mortality of African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians
3. Regional patterns of urban African American mortality
Part II. Local Studies: 4. Extremes of mortality in the poorest states
5. Regional differences in American Indian mortality
6. Hispanic mortality in New Mexico
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Sociology: death & dying [JHBZ], Sociology: customs & traditions [JHBT], Population & demography [JHBD], Social groups [JFS], Cultural studies [JFC]