This thesis addresses the question of health inequalities in relation to visible ethnic minorities in the UK Chapter 1 provides an overview of the international literature on health inequalities and concludes that social disadvantage is consistently associated with some degree of health disadvantage. However, the extent of health inequalities alter depending on the indicator of health used, the measure of socio-economic circumstances, the stage of the life course addressed, and the gender of research subjects. Chapter 2 begins with a brief history of visible ethnic minorities within the UK. The conceptual difficulties of the concepts of race, ethnicity and racism are considered. Despite the diversity in socio-economic patterns all UK minority ethnic groups pay an economic 'ethnic penalty'. The experience of racial hostility and abuse is reported to be a regular occurrence by members of minority ethnic groups. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the studies of health of UK minority ethnic group members and considers three theoretical approaches to explaining health differences between minority and majority groups. These approaches emphasise different aspects of the experiences of migration and of racism as determinants of socio-economic circumstances and health for members of minority ethnic groups. Chapter 4 discusses some of the methodological difficulties inherent in any such analysis, and considers the benefits and constraints of using the Sample of Anonymised Records from the 1991 UK census as the basis for empirical exploration of these questions. The next three chapters (5,6, and 7) report the results of the analysis of reported long term limiting illness in young adult and mid-life men (Chapter 5), young adult and mid-life women (Chapter 6) and children under 16 (Chapter 7), taking into account migrant status and socio-economic circumstances. ii Chapter 8 concludes this study by discussing these findings in comparison with the predictions from the different models of the links between ethnicity and health. The results are reviewed in the light of previous research