"Racial hygiene" originates as a set of state-sanctioned policies in late-19th and early-20th century Germany that are developed in conversation with eugenicists in the U.S. It encourages certain groups to procreate and discourages others, with the expressed purpose of promoting characteristics deemed "desirable."

Notions of "racial hygiene" will become embedded in systems of public health across the Western world, with an enhanced emphasis on heredity. Under this ideology, poverty and sickness are attributed to the individual and not social causes, where a person living in poverty is considered "lacking" in terms of heredity.