Table 1.

Decomposed effect estimates and interpretation (adapted from Wang & Arah 2015).

Effect	Research question / counterfactual interpretation
ATE (total disparity)	What if those racialized as Black had been racialized and treated as white by all measured and unmeasured mediating systems?
CDE (disparity without mediators)	What if those racialized as Black had instead been racialized and treated as white in the absence of all measured mediators (i.e., how did unobserved mediating pathways of racism produce racialized disparities?
PAI (disparity attributable to mediating interaction, e.g. via college attainment)	What if those racialized as Black had instead been racialized and treated as white by the underlying causal system (e.g., how did the system connecting educational attainment to health racialize individuals and discriminate based on those racial categories, via the interaction effect)?
PIE (disparity attributable to mediating main effect, e.g. via college attainment)	What if those racialized as Black had instead been racialized as white by the system producing the distribution of exposures but still racialized as Black by the system connecting the expsosure to health (e.g., how much of the impact of education in mediating the total racial disparity was because of racialized differences in attainment rates and a main effect of attainment on health, via emergent discrimination)?