I recorded a new version of the lecture I created last spring: COVID-19 and Health Disparities. It defines health disparities, introduces the theory of fundamental causes, and then describes COVID-19 disparities by race/ethnicity and age with reference to education and occupational inequality. For intro sociology students.
Using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics (inspired by this piece from Justin Fox), I showed the percentage of workers working at home according to the median wage in their occupations, illustrating how people in lower-paid occupations aren’t working at home, while professionals and managers are:
And, using age- and race/ethnic-specific mortality rates from CDC, with population denominators from the 2018 ACS (I don’t know why I can’t find the denominators CDC uses), I made this:
The greatest race/ethnic disparities are in the working ages, which suggests they are driven at least partly by occupational inequality.
The lecture 23 minutes, slides with references and links are here.
