 Of kin and kidneys: Do kinship networks contribute to racial disparities in living donor kidney transplantation?Jonathan Daw Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 104, issue C, 42-47 Abstract: In the United States, racial disparities in kidney transplantation are large and especially stark for living donor transplants. Medical researchers frequently attribute this to the availability of medically compatible living kidney donors, who are usually kin. This paper evaluates this hypothesis by testing whether African American transplant candidates likely have lesser access to suitable living donors in their kinship networks than white candidates. This paper evaluates this hypothesis using a simulation design. Contrary to prior research on this topic, this simulation analysis concludes that black-white disparities in living donor kidney transplantation are unlikely to be the result of group differences in the availability of suitable donors. Although individual white kin are individually more likely to be suitable donors, African Americans' larger average kinship networks compensate for this difference. Keywords: Racial disparities in health; Kidney transplantation; Kinship networks; Contraindications; Histocompatibility; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:104:y:2014:i:c:p:42-47 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.043 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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