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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The socioeconomic determinants of older people's health in Brazil
— the importance of marital status and income | | Author(s) | Antônio M Bós, Angelo J Bós |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 27, part 3, May 2007 |
| Pages | pp 385-405 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_ASO |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Older women ; Economic status [elderly] ; Marital status ; Income [older people] ; Social surveys ; Brazil. |
| Annotation | Studies in various countries have reported that older people who are married have better health than older widows. This paper reports a replication of these analyses with Brazilian data. The authors used ordered logistic regression (with self-assessed health as the main dependent variable) to explore the relationships between marital status, individual and household income, and the health of men and women. The explanatory variables of interest were gender, marital status, and individual and family income. Data are from a survey of 7920 non-institutionalised older people resident in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in 1995. The survey used a structured, multi-disciplinary questionnaire, which collected information on demographic attributes, household composition, social relations, occupation, income and health status. The results show that widows were 20% more likely to report better health than married women. Those women without their own income had worse health than those who did, even after controlling for family income. For men, there were no significant differences in health by marital status. The main recommendation is that the health status and economic circumstances of married older people should be given more attention in both research and policy, certainly in Brazil and probably other Latin American countries. Programmes of income support in the poorest households should include specific transfers to these older women. Brazil's Family Health and Older People's Health public programme should place more emphasis on older home-makers' health. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070426004 A |
| Classmark | CC: BD: F:W: SLM: JF: 3F: 7W6 |
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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