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People of lower socioeconomic status (SES) consistently appear to have much worse health outcomes.'No matter which measures of SES are used or how health is measured, the evidence that this association is large and pervasive across time and space is abundant (Marmot 1999; Smith 1999). To docu-ment its principal features, Figure 1 displays the main contours of the socioeconomic status health gradient in the United States by plotting at each age the fraction of people who self-report themselves in excellent or very good health by age-specific household income quartiles. Figure 2 plots the same fractions for people in poor or fair health. Until the end of life, at each age every downward movement in income is associated with being in poorer health. Moreover, these health differences by income class can only be described as dramatically large. The fraction in excellent or very good health in the top income …