Gender, ethnicity and self-reported health: the case of
African±Caribbean populations in London
Sarah Curtis*, Kim Lawson
Department of Geography, Queen Mary and West®eld College, University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
Abstract
This paper explores quantitative and qualitative information on self-reported health, focusing especially on gender
dierences in the reporting of health problems by men and women. The research reported here particularly
examines evidence relating to the African±Caribbean population in London, some of which suggests that there may
be a distinctive pattern of reported illness in this ethnic group in Britain, which dierentiates it from the average
pattern for the majority population. Various population surveys using systematic measures have shown that women
and men dier in terms of reported morbidity (particularly in the prevalence of self-reported illness and psycho-
social health). This paper reviews the quantitative data available to investigate the gender dierences in the African±
Caribbean population, showing that the pattern seems to vary according to the measure of health used. We consider
how qualitative material from research conducted in East London may complement quantitative survey data and
provide possible explanations for the reported health of African±Caribbean women and men. We report on
qualitative observations of the process of completing standardized questionnaire items and discussion of these by
the informants. We also examine the understandings about health and illness expressed by African±Caribbean
women and men during in-depth interviews. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reported health; Gender dierences; African±Caribbean populations in Britain
This paper explores quantitative and qualitative in-
formation on self-reported health, focusing especially
on gender dierences in the reporting of health pro-
blems by men and women. We are particularly con-
cerned with self-reported health by men and women in
the African±Caribbean ethnic group living in Britain.
The paper starts by reviewing some quantitative
data on self-reported illness to investigate the gender
dierences in the African±Caribbean population. We
focus particularly on what can be learned from the in-
formation which was collected in the British Census in
1991, concerning health variation in inner London,
and consider how this relates to sample survey data
which have also been designed to make comparisons
between ethnic groups. These sources suggest that the
pattern of reported illness in this ethnic group may be
dierent from the average pattern for the majority
(mainly white British) population, but that the dier-
ences are complex and do not always appear consistent
across the data sources. We also use qualitative data
to explore some of the possible explanations for
reported morbidity among African±Caribbean women
and men.
Social Science & Medicine 50 (2000) 365±385
0277-9536/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 277- 95 3 6 ( 99 ) 0 02 9 4 - 4
www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-171-975-5420; fax: +44-
181-981-6276.
E-mail address: s.e.curtis@qmw.ac.uk (S. Curtis)