Suggests socioeconomic status operates as a higher-order cause of health inequalities by determining access to flexible resources (money, knowledge, power). This inequality affects both the individual and the contextual level in regard to the ability to deploy resources when facing adversities, such as: safe neighborhood vs. dangerous community, disease screening vs. delayed care, etc., which leads to different health outcomes. As the time passes, new technologies appear and, because the high socioeconomical class adopts it first, the inequality continues to persist.
Proposed by Jo Phelan and Bruce Link, in 1995