Quality of life (QOL) perceptions influence patient decisions and preferences for care and, more importantly, physicians may render recommendations based on their impressions of the patient's QOL. QOL is perceived differently by different ethnic groups. This may have implications for understanding ethnic disparities in medical procedure utilization such as joint replacement for osteoarthritis. In a study of 596 elderly male patients with moderate to severe symptomatic knee/hip osteoarthritis, we examined how African-American and white patients rate their overall QOL. We adjusted their responses for important demographic, clinical, and psychosocial potential confounders. African-American (44%) and white (56%) patients in this study were comparable, except that African-Americans reported lower socioeconomic status compared with whites. After adjusting for all other study covariates, African-American ethnicity (B= -0.121, P = 0.004) was negatively correlated with overall QOL ratings. How ethnic variations in perceptions of QOL impact observed ethnic disparity in the utilization of joint replacement therapy needs further investigation.