Sexual minority status and self-rated health: the importance of socioeconomic status, age, and sex
M.B. Thomeer
American Journal of Public Health, 2013, vol. 103, issue 5, 881-888
Abstract:
I examined how sexual minority status, as indicated by sex of sexual partners, is associated with self-rated health and how socioeconomic status suppresses and age and sex moderate this association. I used multinomial logistic regression to analyze aggregated data from the 1991 to 2010 General Social Survey, a population-based data set (n = 13,480). Respondents with only different-sex partners or with any same-sex partners reported similar levels of health. With socioeconomic status added to the model, respondents with any same-sex partners reported worse health than those with only different-sex partners, but only if sexual intercourse with same-sex partners occurred in the previous 5 years. Age and sex moderated this relationship: having any same-sex partners was associated with worse health for women but not men and among younger adults only. The relationship between sexual minority status and self-rated health varies across sociodemographic groups. Future research should use population-level data to examine other health outcomes and continue to explore how the intersection of sexual minority status and other sociodemographic indicators shapes health.
Keywords: adolescent; adult; age; aged; article; female; health status; human; information processing; lesbianism; male; male homosexuality; middle aged; minority group; psychological aspect; self report; sex difference; sexuality; socioeconomics; statistical model; statistics; very elderly, Adolescent; Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Data Collection; Female; Health Status; Homosexuality, Female; Homosexuality, Male; Humans; Logistic Models; Male; Middle Aged; Minority Groups; Self Report; Sex Factors; Sexual Partners; Socioeconomic Factors; Young Adult (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2012.301040
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2012.301040_5
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2012.301040
Access Statistics for this article
American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia
More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().