Social status and the health of families: A model

William W. Dressler

Social Science & Medicine, 1994, vol. 39, issue 12, 1605-1613

Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine the association of family health and social status, taking the family as the unit of analysis. One particular dimension of social status, lifestyle incongruity, is examined as a predictor of family health, relative to other stressors and sociodemographic variables. Lifestyle incongruity refers to the degree to which style of life (measured by the accumulation of consumer goods and the adoption of specific leisure activities) exceeds economic status (as assessed by occupational class and educational credentials). Using the 1980 General Household Survey of the United Kingdom, it was found that lifestyle incongruity discriminated between households with and without chronically ill members, and was associated with a global rating of family health, controlling for a variety of factors. The logic of studying the health of families, and the implications of these results for future research are discussed.

Keywords: status; incongruence; family; health; job; stressors; General; Household; Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(94)90074-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:39:y:1994:i:12:p:1605-1613

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().