 The strategy of aligning the social groups used to define inequalities in health with the major social causes of health evidently presupposes that one knows what those causes are. To determine whether any of the previously discussed correlations between individual life expectancy and a social variable is causal, one needs some account of the causal pathways between candidate social determinants and specific mortality risk factors. Unfortunately, these pathways are not well understood (Mackenbach 2019: 49–55; Adler &amp; Newman 2002; Adler &amp; Ostrove 1999; R. Evans, Hodge, &amp; Pless 1994). While research in this area remains preliminary, it may be useful to describe some of the possibilities.