Life-Course Approaches to Socio-Economic Differentials in Cause-Specific Adult Mortality - Essay Example

According to Davey et al, social determinants in reference to health contribute to individual possession of social, physical, and individual resources to obtain and identify individual aspirations. Resources made available to society, their quality and quantity go a long way to become social determinants to people’s health. In the United States, issues related to health care have got only a negligible proportion in the status of health differences existing among the Americans. Health behavior differences such as cases of smoking, drinking, and diet have been found to have a minimum impact on health than the social determinants which include income among others.

Effects on health, related to the level of income tend to have the greatest bearing on the American people than risk factors related to behavior such as smoking and alcohol use. For example, many Americans are dying of chronic diseases such as stroke and heart diseases as a result of their economic conditions and situations.

In conclusion, knowing the health effects of social policies should ultimately change the value that the American population places on them. This is a result of great indifference among the population which the social policies seem to encourage. The policies to a larger extent tend to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. Emphasis should be placed on social determinants of health and not behavioral risk factors.