The Persistence of Poverty: A Bourdieusian Analysis of Medicaid Managed Care and Reproductive Health Disparities

Abstract

Drawing on two separate qualitative studies conducted in the fall 2012 and the summer of 2013, this paper seeks to understand the role of Medicaid Managed Care in the reproduction of reproductive disparities among low-income Latina women. By applying a Bourdieusian framework of analysis to my two sets of data, I was able to develop my own theory of reproductive health capital. I use this theory to illustrate how inherent structural deficiencies of Medicaid Managed Care as well as communication failures among patients and physicians caused by a nonalignment of cultural interpersonal styles compound to limit low-income Latina women's access to and acquisition of proper reproductive health knowledge or formal reproductive health capital. As low-income Latina women have limited access to formal reproductive health capital, they are relying on their own communal subjective and misinformed reproductive health knowledge or informal reproductive health capital. The reliance on informal reproductive health capital to inform their reproductive health attitudes and decisions places low-income Latina women at higher risks for unintended pregnancies and its resultant economic and social implications.