Abstract

Disparities in socioeconomic status correlate closely with health, so that the lower a person's social position, the worse his health, an effect that the epidemiologist Michael Marmot has labeled the status syndrome. Marmot has argued that differences in autonomy, understood in terms of control, underlie the status syndrome. He has, therefore, recommended that the American medical profession champion policies that improve patient autonomy. In this paper, I clarify the kind of control Marmot sees as connecting differences in socioeconomic status to health disparities. I then discuss his use of Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to justice, arguing that he is unsuccessful in relating autonomy as a descriptive property with a normative framework that can adequately explain why and to what extent we should reduce health disparities.