INTERNATIONAL STRATIFICATION AND THE HEALTH OF WOMEN - AN EMPIRICAL-COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION

Women's health status is investigated in the context of stratification in the world-system. We investigate three alternative conceptualizati ons of the world-system for their effects on women's health status, us ing country-level data. The models investigate the effects of world-sy stem position, military expenditures, and health resources on women's health status. Comparison of the alternative conceptualizations of wor ld-system position indicate that a continuous model is only negligibly better than three- or five-block models at explaining women's health status. Regardless of how it is measured, world-system position has dr amatic effects on women's health. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd