5. SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT IN THE SOCIETY
The aim of social epidemiology is to identify socio-structural factors that are considered to be the effect of health within a large population. It has been stated that those that normally come from poor social class are the ones that normally get more affected by a disease or an illness, more than those that come from the high class society, those that are wealthy. There are a number of social structural factors that contributes to the effect on the health of the individual namely; social class, income distribution, gender.
5.1. Social class
It has been stated that the link between health and class is useful to help sociologists determine the individual’s class position (Cockerham, 2012:49). According to Weitz (2013:50), social class refers to the individual’s position within a particular society. This has been considered
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Gender and sex
According to Jones (1991:345) both sex and gender affect health. Sex refers to, were as to gender refers to social categorization of masculine and feminine and to the several expectations regarding masculinity and femininity that we are supposed to follow based on our assigned sex (Bird and Rieker, 2008: 358).
Based on simple display of epidemiological data, there is a great explanation that sex and gender are also socio-structural factors that also affect health. It has been stated that individuals that are classified as females within a society tend to live for a long period when compared to men. However the significant differences that may exist within both males and females is that “life expectancies suggest that sex may straightly affect health, but the chances that exists between these two categories come with the concept that it is actually gender that affects health” (Weitz, 2013:63), This is because most females live longer than males not because of the fact that their biology has changed but because their social position has completely changed within a