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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Understanding the relationship between income and health
— how much can be gleaned from cross-sectional data? | | Author(s) | Michaela Benzeval, Ken Judge, Sue Shouls |
| Journal title | Social Policy & Administration, vol 35, no 4, September 2001 |
| Pages | pp 376-396 |
| Keywords | Income [older people] ; Health [elderly] ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Correlation ; Cross sectional surveys. |
| Annotation | Using data from the General Household Survey (GHS), this paper aims to develop a better understanding of the relationship between income and health in the general British population. It examines methodological inconsistencies in the GHS and other national surveys, and assesses their consequences for inferences that can be drawn about the income-health association. These issues include: the measurement of income and its functional form; health selection; and the role of confounders. The paper explores the relative strength of the complex association between health and income, in contrast to that of other socioeconomic measures. The association appears to be non-linear, and is attenuated but not removed by controlling for health selection effects. The inclusion of a wide range of confounders into models of income and health reduces the association between them, but does not make it insignificant. Compared with other socioeconomic measures, income appears to be a better discriminator of health status than education or occupation. However, tenure and care ownership seem to be at least as good, if not better, indicators than current income. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010911214 A |
| Classmark | JF: CC: F: 49: 3KB |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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