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Original Summaries of Selected CANCERLIT Records
Association of Socioeconomic Inequality with Cancer Incidence
Last modified on:
Tuesday, April 20, 1999 10:52:32
Copyright © 1994-2008, Information Ventures, Inc.
Cancer occurrence is highly associated with race in the USA, with
the incidence of cancers of the lung, stomach, uterine cervix,
prostate, mouth, esophagus, larynx, and pancreas all significantly
greater among blacks as compared to whites. Socioeconomic factors
such as differences in income, education and occupation, have been
advanced as explanations for these racial cancer differences.
However, previous research has emphasized average socioeconomic
status (SES) measures such as census tract median family income,
and this factor explained only a small proportion of the observed
cancer risk difference. The results of a study from the State
University of New York at Buffalo (Gorey; ICDB/95615341) provide
consistent support for the concept that socioeconomic inequality,
determined from a broad measure of indexes, is directly associated
with cancer incidence for each of seven specific cancer site among
both black and white adult populations. Cancer onset was found to
occur more than five years earlier among blacks compared to whites.
The authors showed that a linear model which regressed census tract
incident cancer cases on socioeconomic skewness, dispersion and
average SES, and was adjusted for the factors of tract population,
median age, gender (% female), and residential mobility, accounted
for 75% of the criterion variability (R2 =0.745). Socioeconomic
skewness, median family income, and income dispersion, accounted
for 95.5%, 2.7% and 1.8%, respectively, of the cancer variance due
to socioeconomic factors. Once these three socioeconomic factors
had been addressed, race did not figure in the statistical model,
nor was it found to interact significantly with any of the
socioeconomic factors. Socioeconomic skewness is a function of
both material resources (home values and car ownership) and poverty
levels in an area, serving essentially as an index of relative
impoverishment. It was found to be directly associated with cancer
incidence for each site among both blacks and whites, including
both black-dominant and comparison sites, and its association with
cancer incidence gave similar relative risk estimates for blacks
and whites. Black exposure to very high levels of socioeconomic
skewness was determined to be approximately eight times greater
than among whites. The authors conclude that any policy designed
to bridge the socioeconomic gap between races will also serve to
diminish the differences between racial groups in cancer incidence.
November, 1995
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