Racial disparities in Death rates and Death incidences in Xinjiang: A study of multilevel ecological mechanisms

Health disparities based on racial status are well-researched by social scientists, but this field of knowledge has rarely been investigated beyond the Western context. As the largest province in China, Xinjiang has over 50% non-Han populace—and this group is subjected to various forms of inequalities. The current study is the first to quantitatively demonstrate the disparity in mortality between the Han majority and Turkic minority in Xinjiang. We have developed a theory-driven framework to approach race as a fundamental cause of mortality disparity through both individual and context-level pathways that trigger the proximate determinants of death. We compiled the 2015 China Microcensus with the Sixth Decennial Census (2010) and web-extracted point-of-interest information for data at different ecological levels. The results reveal that the mortality rate is significantly pronounced for Turks at the county-level and Turks’ death incidence is elevated at the household level. The inclusion of variables at the individual- and context-level explains about 38% of the mortality disparity between Han and Turks, but the significant disparity remains strong after considering the covariates, the “healthy migrant” scenario, geographical clustering, and exposure risk. We cautiously suggest the remaining unexplained portion of the mortality disparity may be due to unobserved racial inequity and urge the academic community to further investigate this underexplored subject.