Health in California : California health survey.

  • California Department of Public Health
Date:
[1957]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in California : California health survey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/100 page 40
    oe ee ee eee ei wine abling White (excluding Spanish surname) Negro Other Rate per 1,000 persons per year. Rate per person per year. Percent of population. Cause Some likely to experience some language difficulty in replying to the questions of an interviewer. Lan- guage difficulty is likely to be a problem in the “other” group, since at least the list of chronic conditions was partly translated into Spanish for the Spanish-speaking group. (See Appendix A, Card A (Spanish).) This “other” group is a small part of the total population, less than 2 percent, so that the rates for this group are subject to rela- tively high sampling variations. When these varia- tions are taken into account, the rates for this group fall into the same range as those for the Spanish surname group. For these reasons, only the three major groups will be discussed further. Besides examining the rates, a useful way to look at health is to compare in the various groups the proportion of total incidence of illness and of total chronic conditions which are disabling or cause some activity limitation. Looked at in this way, Spanish surname persons present a _ particular problem as far as incidence of illness is concerned, since 41 percent of their reported illnesses cause some disability, compared to 34 percent for whites and 28 percent for Negroes. Even though the Ne- groes and persons with Spanish surnames in the Survey population had a considerably younger median age than the white Californians, both groups showed a higher proportion of chronic conditions causing disability or some present ac- tivity limitation. These differences are not as large as the ones for incidence. To summarize the racial patterns of health and medical care: The total rates for illness and chronic conditions are high- est for white persons, but the illnesses and chronic conditions reported by members of the minority groups are likely to be more severe. These minor- 40 ity groups also tend to have longer periods of hospitalization than do the white persons although their rate of admission to hospitals is not as high. Also, they are less likely to possess some health insurance coverage and to visit physicians. Income Subject to many qualifications, it can be said that family income levels are often associated with general health conditions. The classification ac- cording to income used here for the analysis of health and medical care is a common one, but ad- mittedly crude. In essence it is a comparison of persons with low family incomes with persons in all other income groups. The following table shows the distribution of the total sample accord- ing to smaller income classes and may serve as useful background information, even though health and medical care data for these smaller groups are not now available. The following discussion will be concerned with patterns of health and medical care among three income groups—less than $2,000, $2,000 to $4,999, and $5,000 and over. In general, there is a marked contrast in health and medical care between the lowest income group and the other two income groups, which have fairly similar patterns. The lowest income group is less healthy than the other two groups, particu- larly with respect to chronic conditions and days of disability. This group also obtains more hospital care than the other two. Possession of some health insurance coverage is less than half as frequent among low income persons as it is among persons in the middle income group, and less than a third as frequent as is true for persons in the highest
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image