Sociological work on class informs the study of racial disparities in health, because as Du Bois (1899) noted at the turn of the century, race is strongly intertwined with SES. Recent research continues to find that SES differences between the races account for a substantial component of the racial/ethnic differences in health (Hayward et al. 2000; Williams and Collins 1995; Hummer 1996). However, sociologists have emphasized that race and SES are two related but not interchangeable systems of social ordering that jointly contribute to health risks (Navarro 1990; Williams and Collins 1995). Accordingly, attention needs to be given to both race- and class-based factors that undergird racial health disparities.
