Erin Maguire

Erin Maguire

April 5, 2012

Race and Ethnic Relations

Leukemia Mortality Rate per 100,000 and 95% confidence intervals (2006-2008)

Source: http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/researcher/community-health/masschip/topics/leukemia-cancer.html

The chart above shows the Leukemia mortality rate in Taunton, Swampscott, and all of Massachusetts. The information reveals that there were no black or Asian men that died of Leukemia in Taunton or Swampscott in 2006-2008. This data also does not take into consideration infant death rates so if there were infants that died of Leukemia, it would not be shown in this data. I was surprised to find that it was only white men that died of Leukemia in both of these towns because in Massachusetts Black men had the highest amount of mortality rates. Before examining the data I thought that this would be true for all three regions examined. After I examined these statistics I found that it makes sense because both Taunton and Swampscott are predominantly white towns. Swampscott’s population consisting of over 90% white people throughout the years examined. I also thought that since Leukemia more often affects white people than blacks and any other race that they would have a higher mortality rate than the other races in Massachusetts. The fact that the mortality rate of Leukemia is higher in black people than white could be because they often do not have the same access to health care that white people do. There could be black health disparities that affect the mortality rates. Leukemia requires very expensive treatments, hospitalization, and regular doctor visits which would be difficult for anyone, especially those that are of lower social economic status. Many of the programs created for African Americans are based on after-school programs and helping the youth succeed. These are very important but I think it would also be very helpful to help African-Americans overcome the healthcare disparities. There are a few organizations available to help with these issues but there isn’t much funding available for them and they are often only able to contribute a scarce amount of time and money to these sick people.

Erin Maguire Census Assignment
Erin Maguire Census Assignment
 

Erin Maguire

Race and Ethics

March 22, 2012

            For my paper I compared the amount of people above and below the poverty among whites only, blacks only, and Asians only from 2006-2010. The data revealed that there are more black people below the poverty level in Taunton , Everett, Massachusetts, and the United States in comparison to white people and Asians. In all of the four places examined, except Taunton, Asians had more people below the poverty level than whites. The margin of error in this data was fairly low other than in the Everett data where the highest margin of error was highest for Asians at +/- 9.3 and +/-6.0 for Blacks. I was surprised to find that there were more Asians below the poverty level in three out of four of the places examined because although I thought this might be true for the United States as a whole I had figured that whites and blacks would be closer in amounts of people below the poverty level . This was far from true whites and Asians are the closest in all four of the areas examined with black people nearly doubling if not a little more than doubling the amount of people below the poverty level in comparison to whites. Asians and whites were closer in amounts of people below the poverty level with black people doubling them in number. Considering Taunton and Everett are only about 40 miles away from each other and are geographically similar it isn’t surprising that they’d have similar patterns in poverty. The amount of people below the poverty level in the United States is nearly the same with Asians having roughly two percent more people below the poverty level, while black people more than doubled the other two races in amount of people below the poverty level. This is a good projection and makes sense since the data is roughly the same for the two cities examined, and Massachusetts which all obviously make up the United States. The data was over a course of 5 years and although there are programs meant to help the amount of people living below the poverty level, the fact that there are double the amount of black people living below poverty than whites and Asians clearly reveals that something more has to be done.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 American Community Survey

  Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 American Community Survey

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 American Community Survey

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 American Community Survey

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