We often here people wish others "health and prosperity" and many people assume that with one comes the other. Preachers and practicing Christians proclaim the scripture from the Bible that encourages followers to "be prosperous and in good health," and many people grasp the prosperity part but ignore the health part. As a result, America is the most prosperous country in the world and yet the most unhealthy. This enormous gap between the two trickles down throughout the social-economic structure of the country and reveals an even more interesting fact.

Epidemiologists have found that the relationship of social class to health is very strong. In the United States and throughout the world, people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder tend to be less healthy than those toward the top are. These differences occur at each stage of the stratification hierarchy. The working poor are healthier than then underclass, people in the upper middle class are healthier than those in the middle class, and those in the upper class are healthier than those in the upper middle class.

Health is also related to social mobility. Within any particular class group, the healthiest are most likely to have upward mobility and the least healthy are most likely to have downward mobility.

Sociologists have explored various factors that might help explain why the health hierarchy is so strongly related to social class. One major factor appears to involve stress and how we are able to deal with this stress.

People at lower ends of the stratification ladder experience more stress, and they have fewer resources with which to combat this stress. For instance, they are more likely to live in areas that are crowded and have poor sanitation, inadequate heating and cooling, and greater exposure to various environmental hazards.

They are also less likely to be able to afford healthy diets and tend to have jobs that are more stressful and dangerous. Another major factor appears to involve health-related behaviors. Those at the lower end of the stratification ladder are often less able to adopt healthy life styles or to have relationships with health care providers that promote the best health outcomes (Discovering Sociology, Stockard 2000).

One reason wealthier people are supposedly in better health is because they can obviously afford better medical treatment, which includes the use of the more expensive and highly developed technology. Health insurers are more willing to offer their services because they know they will collect the bill, but they are less likely to take risk on people of lower economic status. This is a sad but true fact, that money can buy better health. It should not be this way in a democratic society.

Researchers have concluded that work and environment, and the amount of related stress play a large part in whether one will be healthy or not. In other words, depending on how much a person makes and where they live has a lot to do with their health. Why it takes a team of researchers to figure this out lacks reason because any idiot can see this.

Access to decent health care is divided according to class. Practicing physicians would rather locate their practice in wealthier communities while inner cities must beg for government programs for neighborhood clinics. These clinics recruit inner city graduates in nursing and employ teams of doctors wishing to fulfill a personal humanitarian mission. The health care system classifies these clinics as high risk and offer substandard services and information about health.

The more money a client has and the more people they know will guarantee them quality health care. If one grows in the inner city and their circle of friends include only those they went to elementary and high school with, and then work with down at the plant or on the dock, they lack the connections to people in quality health care, thus they lack information and a chance at a healthier life.

Max Weber's analysis of social stratification can help us understand that one dimension of stratification is status, or prestige - communities or social networks of people with similar lifestyles and viewpoints. For instance, people in one status group might shop at upscale organic grocery stores, exercise at the neighborhood health club, vacation at ski resorts in the winter, take bike tours through Europe in the summer, and have regular exams from their doctor and dentist.

People in another status group, perhaps like those who go to the University Hospital Clinic, might depend on food stamps for their food, shop at the corner convenience store because they don't have transportation to go elsewhere, cannot begin to afford membership in a health club, and get their health care through the local public health clinic or from whatever doctor they can find who will take a Medicaid card (Discovering Sociology, Stockard, 2000).

If living environment has a lot to do with a person's health, the inner city is crowded, more prone to wider circulation of disease and is at higher risk simply because of the lack of resources and information. The stores in the community do not sell the best meats and vegetables and do not have the greatest selection of health food. There is no one to hold community and clinical seminars about the importance of health care and how to eat and live healthier, which things taught in traditional college courses. And there are not, if any, health spas, gyms, and or facilities that offer information health programs.

Dangerous working environments are not as plentiful to lower-class workers as indifferent employers are. The company a person works for has a lot to do with the amount of information about health care and the actual quality of health care one gets. Employers in the inner city know their workers and decide according to that on how in-depth they will be about health care.

If one works at the warehouse down on 4th avenue in the inner city, most likely the employer will not give a damn about your health concerns. They will not spend on information or hold community awareness programs about healthcare, and they will go with a health insurer who does not care and who will charge whatever they want for insurance.

In Black-mostly jobs, the employer will not offer extra information or services because they figure Blacks do not care and only care about their checks being correct. Sad to say, but this is the mind set that Blacks have established only because many are not exposed to an environment where health works in conjunction with prosperity. Even in the Black community churches, the trend is "being blessed" and health is not preached as often as it should be. Fast food joints litter the inner city along with free clinics - that pass out condoms - and liquor stores also, add to the deteriorating health environment of the Black community.

The suburbs are different, however. Larger corporations choose to locate in growing communities and townships and many graduating medical students choose to move into and practice in those type environments. All that is new and improved begins in those areas such as hospitals with the best medical staff and latest technology. And the inner city is left to deteriorate - who then has to beg the government for funds to set up programs.

So it is no wonder that Blacks have lower life expectancies and Black babies have the highest infant mortality rate and that Blacks have some how contracted AIDS faster than any other minority group in America. Not because Blacks are somehow cursed to hell for past sins or because they are naturally illiterate and undeveloped beings, but because in America, the poor - which consist of more Blacks than others - and inner city dwellers, which also consist mostly of Blacks, will deteriorate faster than other cultures all for the lack and love of money, and the make-up of America's class and racial structure.

© 2004 by C.R. Hamilton