New wrinkle in growing health gap.

• Position: Medicine & Health

Health disparities have grown quite dramatically among people in the same socioeconomic groups--oftentimes more than those among different groups, a study published in Social Science Research has found. Researchers discovered, for example, that health disparities between employed and unemployed men decreased over the course of the study, while disparities among men who were employed actually increased.

"People with the same socioeconomic status differ much more from each other in terms of health than they did 20 or so years ago," relates lead author Hui Zheng. "This is an issue that really hasn't been studied before and needs to be examined more closely

"Health scholars often emphasize between-groups disparities in health, but here we found that within-group disparities often far exceed the between-groups disparities, and the changes in total health disparities in the last two decades are mainly driven by the changes in the within group disparities."

The data from this study cannot determine why within-group health disparities have increased over the past quarter-century. Several factors may be in play, depending on the group. For instance, the increase in disparity among employed men may be due in part to an increase in the number of men employed only part time, which may reduce their access to health care services compared to full-time employees.

Overall, other studies have suggested...