Intersecting Inequalities: Education, Race/Ethnicity, and Sterilization

Abstract

Despite extensive evidence that fundamental causes of health, such as socioeconomic status (SES) and race/ethnicity, often interact, the potential importance of such interactions has received limited attention in the contraceptive use literature. Even fewer studies have explicitly considered how interacting systems of power may structure contraceptive use with an intersectional framework. Drawing on the female ( N = 8,744) and male ( N = 5,826) samples of the 2006–15 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), this study relies on an intersectional approach to examine if education gradients in female and male sterilization vary by race/ethnicity. For non-Hispanic white respondents, results confirm the negative education gradient in female sterilization, and positive gradient in male sterilization. For non-Hispanic black and Hispanic respondents, education gradients tend to be less steep for female sterilization, but steeper for male sterilization. This indicates that different forms of oppression combine, overlap, and intersect to shape individuals’ unique social positions and experiences—including their contraceptive use.