Self-Rated Health: Inequalities and Potential Determinants

Evangelos C. Alexopoulos and Mary Geitona
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Evangelos C. Alexopoulos: Department of Public Health, Medical School, University of Patras, 26500 Rio Patras, Greece
Mary Geitona: Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 38221 Volos, Greece

IJERPH, 2009, vol. 6, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Understanding social inequalities in health is of great importance; it provides the conceptual frame for investigating the social factors that affect health, together with empirical evidence for improving population health. Individual and socioeconomic data, disease related conditions and self rated health (SRH) ratings were collected from a representative sample of 1,000 participants in order to study health inequalities in Greece. 20.8% of men and 37.2% of women reported poor health status. Significant inequalities in SRH were observed. Strong associations of poor SRH with gender, age, insurance coverage and chronic diseases were identified. Social insurance scheme captured partly the effects of educational level, income and residence area in SRH in multivariate analysis. Respondents under chronic treatment and those suffering from cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and neurological/psychiatric disorders exhibited the highest risk of reporting poor SRH. Our findings provide decision-makers with insights into how to manage health inequalities by prioritizing preventive measures and consequently, progress towards the fair distribution of healthcare resources.

Keywords: self-rated health; health inequalities; social determinants; chronic diseases; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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