We next considered whether poverty, unfair treatment and racial/ethnic stigma contributed to these disparities. In preliminary analyses, we first confirmed that exposure to these forms of social disadvantage varied across black, white and Hispanic drinkers (see Table 4). As expected, racial/ethnic minorities were more likely than whites to be living in poverty, and to report unfair treatment and high levels of racial/ethnic stigma. Our previous study further showed that within each racial/ethnic group, high exposure to social disadvantage corresponded to greater problem drinking, a pattern that held across African Americans, Hispanics and whites (Mulia, et al., in press).
