The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Socioeconomic Status in Health Research: One Size Does Not Fit All
Abstract
Problems with measuring socioeconomic status (SES)-frequently included in clinical and public health studies as a control variable and less frequently as the variable(s) of main interest-could affect research findings and conclusions, with implications for practice and policy. We critically examine standard SES measurement approaches, illustrating problems with examples from new analyses and the literature. For example, marked racial/ethnic differences in income at a given educational level and in wealth at a given income level raise questions about the socioeconomic comparability of individuals who are similar on education or income alone. Evidence also shows that conclusions about nonsocioeconomic causes of racial/ethnic differences in health may depend on the measure-eg, income, wealth, education, occupation, neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, or past socioeconomic experiences-used to "control for SES," suggesting that findings from studies that have measured limited aspects of SES should be reassessed. We recommend an outcome- and social group-specific approach to SES measurement that involves (1) considering plausible explanatory pathways and mechanisms, (2) measuring as much relevant socioeconomic information as possible, (3) specifying the particular socioeconomic factors measured (rather than SES overall), and (4) systematically considering how potentially important unmeasured socioeconomic factors may affect conclusions. Better SES measures are needed in data sources, but improvements could be made by using existing information more thoughtfully and acknowledging its limitations.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators
McEwen, B. S. (1998) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199801153380307 · Cited by 6,733 · cited 1×
“Different socioeconomic factors could affect health at different times in the life course,(31-33) operating at different levels (eg, individual, household, neighborhood)(30,34-37) and through dif ferent causal pathways(3,6,7,9,38-45) (eg, by determining exposures, vulnerability, or even direct physiological effects).(…”
BackgroundTheories for social epidemiology in the 21st century: An ecosocial perspective
Krieger, N. (2001) · International Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/ije/30.4.668 · Cited by 2,155
The Links Between Education and Health
Ross, C. E., & Wu, C.-L. (1995) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2096319 · Cited by 1,943
Neighborhood of residence and incidence of coronary heart disease
Roux, A. V. D., Merkin, S. S., Arnett, D., Chambless, L., Massing, M., Nieto, F. J., Sorlie, P., Szklo, M., Tyroler, H. A., & Watson, R. L. (2001) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm200107123450205 · Cited by 1,799
Lantz, P. M., House, J. S., Lepkowski, J. M., Williams, D. R., Mero, R. P., & Chen, J. (1998) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.279.21.1703 · Cited by 1,514 · cited 1×
“Others explicitly examine relationships between SES and health, seeking to better understand the associations that have been repeatedly observed.(1-22) The social science and social epidemiology literature consistently treats SES as a multidimensional construct comprising”
BackgroundMarmot, M., Bosma, H., Hemingway, H., Brunner, E., & Stansfeld, S. (1997) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(97)04244-x · Cited by 1,291
Morland, K., Wing, S., & Roux, A. D. (2002) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.92.11.1761 · Cited by 1,289
Lynch, J. W., Kaplan, G. A., & Salonen, J. T. (1997) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(96)00191-8 · Cited by 1,150
Social inequalities in health: next questions and converging evidence
Marmot, M., Ryff, C. D., Bumpass, L. L., Shipley, M., & Marks, N. F. (1997) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(96)00194-3 · Cited by 661
Social Stratification across Three Generations: New Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study
Warren, J. R., & Hauser, R. M. (1997) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2657426 · Cited by 227
Cited by
The social determinants of health: It’s time to consider the causes of the causes
Braveman, P., & Gottlieb, L. (2014) · Public Health Reports® · doi:10.1177/00333549141291s206 · Cited by 3,861
Self-citationThe Social Determinants of Health: Coming of Age
Braveman, P., Egerter, S., & Williams, D. R. (2011) · Annual Review of Public Health · doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031210-101218 · Cited by 2,476
Self-citation(2012) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · Cited by 1,951
Social determinants of health and diabetes: A scientific review
Hill-Briggs, F., Adler, N. E., Berkowitz, S. A., Chin, M. H., Gary-Webb, T. L., Navas-Acien, A., Thornton, P. L., & Haire-Joshu, D. (2021) · Diabetes Care · doi:10.2337/dci20-0053 · Cited by 1,732
Socioeconomic Disparities in Health in the United States: What the Patterns Tell Us
Braveman, P. A., Cubbin, C., Egerter, S., Williams, D. R., & Pamuk, E. (2010) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.2009.166082 · Cited by 1,548
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Braveman, P. A., Cubbin, C., Egerter, S., Chideya, S., Marchi, K. S., Metzler, M., & Posner, S.
- Venue
- JAMA
- Publisher
- American Medical Association (AMA)
- Published
- 2005-12-14
- Volume
- 294
- Issue
- 22
- Pages
- 2879
- ISSN
- 0002-9955 (ISSN-L)
- 0098-7484
- OpenAlex
- W2020088825
- Cited by
- 2,242
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 57.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Socioeconomic Status in Health Research: One Size Does Not Fit All. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1001/jama.294.22.2879
- The paper
- Braveman, P. A., Cubbin, C., Egerter, S., Chideya, S., Marchi, K. S., Metzler, M., & Posner, S. (2005). Socioeconomic Status in Health Research: One Size Does Not Fit All. JAMA. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.294.22.2879
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
