Local Healthcare Economic Issue: Low-Income Levels of African Americans

Identifying A Local Healthcare Economic Issue
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A significant share of disparities in healthcare access and life expectancy across Americans derives from the rising economic inequalities in the United States (U.S.). For example, individuals with higher incomes are likely to reside in affluent neighborhoods and have greater social capital as well as educational achievement. This means African Americans are less likely to have medical insurance, benefit from new technologies and medications, or have instant access to speciality and primary care. This paper evaluates low-income levels of African Americans as a critical health care economic problem that warrants the research to augment the population's health outcomes and wellbeing.
Describe a health care economic issue and how it impacts a specific community or population.
Wealth is more unevenly distributed than income in the U.S. and constitutes a critical economic issue accounting for intergenerational health care disparities. More than 50% of all income in the U.S. goes to only 10% of workers, implying that an insignificant share of the population holds over three-quarters of the country's wealth (Khullar & Chokshi, 2018). White Americans' net worth is over 15 times that of African Americans and 13 times that of Americans of Hispanic descent (Khullar & Chokshi, 2018). Wealth supports housing stability, financial security, and educational attainment, which impact the population's health outcomes. In addition, research indicates a persistent wealth gap between Blacks and whites towards the Covid-19 crisis, leaving African American households with increasingly fewer resources to sustain the storm (Moss et al., 2020).
Lack of adequate financial resources implies African Americans lack material resources to invest in activities that augment wellbeing and health (Howard et al., 2019). In addition, low-income populations face significant barriers when trying to access health care compared to their high-income counterparts (Khullar & Chokshi, 2018). As low-income earners, African Americans are more likely to work in organizations that do not provide good health benefits and are thus inclined to forgo health care due to cost concerns. Moreover, low-income Americans are likely to engage in risky lifestyles such as smoking, physical inactivity, and substance abuse, contributing to deteriorated health outcomes (Khullar & Chokshi, 2018).
Explain the rationale for choosing the health care economic issue.
It was challenging to choose income inequality as an economic problem affecting the health outcomes of African Americans. Isolating income's role in health was partially complex because wealth intersects with other social determinants of health – including gender, ethnicity, educational attainment, geography, and race. However, I chose economic inequality due to the persistent racial disparities in America's income and healthcare access and outcomes. African Americans continue to record lower life expectancies and incomes than their white counterparts. Although racial health disparities are attributed to various factors, evidence suggests that chronic economic hardship triggered by...