Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001-2007) pooled sampl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Demography 2011-02, Vol.48 (1), p.127-152
Main Authors: Bratter, Jenifer L., Gorman, Bridget K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Adult
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
Censuses
Continental Population Groups
Cultural identification
Cultural identity
Demography
Ethnic Identity
Family Characteristics - ethnology
Female
Geography
Health
Health Behavior - ethnology
Health care inequality
Health disparities
Health inequality
Health Problems
Health Status Disparities
HEALTH, DISABILITY, AND MORTALITY
Hispanics
Humans
Identification
Indigenous populations
Inequality
Logistic Models
Male
Medicine/Public Health
Middle Aged
Multiracial people
Multiraciality
Native Americans
Personal health
Population
Population Economics
Race
Racial Differences
Racial identity
Racial inequality
Regression analysis
Self Concept
Self Report
Self-evaluation
Social Identification
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic Factors
Socioeconomics
Sociology
Studies
Surveillance
United States
White people
Whites
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Summary:How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001-2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported "best race" category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single "best race" category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.
ISSN:0070-3370
1533-7790
DOI:10.1007/s13524-010-0005-0