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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Age, SES and health
— a population level analysis of health inequalities over the lifecourse | | Author(s) | Steven G Prus |
| Journal title | Sociology of Health & Illness, vol 29, no 2, March 2007 |
| Pages | pp 275-296 |
| Source | http://www.blackwellpublishing.com |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Poverty ; Economic status [elderly] ; Life span ; Measurement ; Canada. |
| Annotation | Two competing hypotheses on the relationship between age, socio-economic status (SES) and health inequality at the cohort/population level are tested. The accumulation hypothesis predicts that the level of SES-based health inequality and consequently, the overall level of health inequality within a cohort progressively increases as it ages. The divergence-convergence hypothesis predicts that these inequalities increase only up to early old age and then decrease. Data from the 1994/1995 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS) were used in this study, adjusted for SES biases in mortality. Bootstrap methods were employed to assess the statistical precision and significance of the results. The Gini coefficient was used to estimate change in the overall level of health inequality with age, and the Concentration coefficient estimated the contribution of SES-based health inequalities to this change. Health was measured using the Health Utilities Index, and income and education provided the measure of SES. First, the findings show that the Gini coefficient progressively increases from 0.048 at ages 15-29 to 0.147 at age 80+. Second, the data reveal that health inequalities between SRE groups (Concentration coefficients for income and education) tend to follow a similar pattern of divergence. Together, these findings provide support for the accumulation hypothesis. A notable implication of the study's findings is that the level of health inequality increases when compensating for age-specific socio-economic differences in mortality. These selective effects of mortality should be considered in future research on health inequalities and the lifecourse. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070510223 A |
| Classmark | CC: W6: F:W: BG6: 3R: 7S |
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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