Series
The Class Divide
Two people break a hip. One recovers in a private rehab suite; the other in a Medicaid nursing home. The difference is money, and it determines everything that follows. Five installments trace how class shapes medical outcomes, erodes the middle class, deepens poverty in old age, divides caregivers by income, and writes its history in teeth. The synthesis follows the destruction forward across generations.
BGM-11A
Two Hip Fractures
The Same Injury in Two Different Americas
A hip fracture is one of the most consequential medical events in later life, and what happens after it is determined less by the injury than by the resources available. What …
BGM-11B
The Middle-Class Myth
Too Much for Medicaid, Not Enough for Care
The American middle class was promised a retirement that the economic architecture of the last forty years has made unreachable for a large portion of the people who believed in …
BGM-11C
Aging in Poverty
What It Means to Grow Old Without Enough
Aging into poverty, or aging in poverty without ever having escaped it, means navigating a system designed to help but often calibrated to exclude, shame, or exhaust the people who …
BGM-11D
The Caregiver Class Gap
Who Provides Care and At What Cost
Who provides care and who receives it maps almost perfectly onto economic class, with low-income women of color disproportionately doing the physical work that allows wealthier …
BGM-11E
Teeth Tell the Story
Dental Care as the Visible Class Divide
The teeth in someone's mouth at 70 reflect decades of access to preventive care, or the lack of it. Dental health as a lens for the broader argument about how class determines the …
