Beyond overall income inequality: Racial income gaps and health disparities

• Racial income gaps explain 14% of Brazil’s Gini coefficient. • Overall income inequality correlates with Non-White mortality but not White mortality. • Nearly 80% of the racial income gap is explained by differences in schooling. • The structural component (21%) is strongly associated with homicides among young Non-White men. • Closing education gaps is insufficient to eliminate racial mortality disparities in Brazil. In this paper, we combine Census data with death records to examine the relationship between income inequality and race-specific mortality across 5,565 municipalities in Brazil. We find that overall income inequality is strongly associated with Non-White mortality but not with White mortality. To understand this disparity, we decompose the Gini coefficient and find that the racial income gap accounts for 14% of overall income inequality. Using an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we show that 79% of the racial income gap is explained by differences in education between Whites and Non-Whites. Finally, we document that the residual (structural) component of the racial income gap is strongly associated with Non-White male mortality, particularly homicides at young ages. Our results imply that closing schooling gaps alone will not eliminate racial health disparities in Brazil.