Population Health Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin, 610 Walnut St., WARF Office Building #707, Madison, WI 53726-2397, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2012 Jul 1;23(7):734-9. doi: 10.1177/0956797612439720. Epub 2012 Jun 14.
Social-class discrimination is evident in many societies around the world, but little is known about its impact on the poor or its role as an explanatory variable in the link between socioeconomic status and health. The current study tested the extent to which perceived discrimination explains socioeconomic gradients in physical health. Participants were 252 adolescents (51% male, 49% female; mean age = 17.51 years, SD = 1.03 years) who participated in Wave 3 of an ongoing longitudinal study focusing on the developmental consequences of rural poverty. Physical health was operationalized as allostatic load, a measure of cumulative wear and tear on the body caused by overactivation of physiological systems that respond to stress. Mediation analyses suggested that 13% of the effect of poverty on allostatic load is explained by perceived discrimination. The findings suggest that social-class discrimination is one important mechanism behind the influence of poverty on physical health.
社会阶层歧视在世界上许多社会中都很明显，但人们对其对贫困人口的影响知之甚少，也不知道它在社会经济地位与健康之间的关联中作为解释变量的作用。本研究检验了感知歧视在多大程度上解释了身体健康方面的社会经济梯度差异。参与者是 252 名青少年（51%为男性，49%为女性；平均年龄=17.51 岁，标准差=1.03 岁），他们参加了一项正在进行的纵向研究的第 3 波研究，该研究重点关注农村贫困对发展的后果。身体健康被定义为身体的累积磨损，这是由应对压力的生理系统过度激活而对身体造成的。中介分析表明，贫困对身体负荷的影响有 13%是由感知歧视造成的。研究结果表明，社会阶层歧视是贫困对身体健康影响的一个重要机制。
