IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v44y1997i6p871-881.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health inequalities in later life in a social democratic welfare state

Author

Listed:
  • Dahl, Espen
  • Birkelund, Gunn Elisabeth

Abstract

The paper examines inequalities in mental health and "serious" illness, i.e. illness with significant consequences, among 964 men and women aged 65 and over in Norway. The aim is to analyse the extent to which the assumed class differentials in ill health in later life are accounted for by current socioeconomic circumstances and social and economic conditions during upbringing. Multiple logistic regression analyses suggest that the bivariate relationship between previous class location and present health condition among elderly men remains or may be attributed to current income. For women, their previous class location is not significantly related to either health outcome. However, women's current income and present economic difficulties are significantly related to both health measures in the expected direction. In addition, serious illness is related to long-standing illness in childhood, and poorer mental health is associated with economic hardship in childhood and dissension in the family of upbringing. For neither sex was father's social class during upbringing an important predictor of ill health. It is concluded that health inequalities in later life may, at least to some extent, be attributed to the "legacy of the past", and that the social democratic welfare state has not succeeded in eradicating health inequalities despite its egalitarian age pension policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahl, Espen & Birkelund, Gunn Elisabeth, 1997. "Health inequalities in later life in a social democratic welfare state," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 871-881, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:44:y:1997:i:6:p:871-881
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(96)00189-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guallar-Castillón, Pilar & Redondo Sendino, Áurea & Banegas, José R. & López-García, Esther & Rodríguez-Artalejo, Fernando, 2005. "Differences in quality of life between women and men in the older population of Spain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(6), pages 1229-1240, March.
    2. Dalstra, J.A.A. & Kunst, A.E. & Mackenbach, J.P., 2006. "A comparative appraisal of the relationship of education, income and housing tenure with less than good health among the elderly in Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(8), pages 2046-2060, April.
    3. Laudicella, Mauro & Cookson, Richard & Jones, Andrew M. & Rice, Nigel, 2009. "Health care deprivation profiles in the measurement of inequality and inequity: An application to GP fundholding in the English NHS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1048-1061, December.
    4. Juan Manuel Pérez-Salamero González & Marta Regúlez-Castillo & Carlos Vidal-Meliá, 2021. "Differences in Life Expectancy Between Self-Employed Workers and Paid Employees when Retirement Pensioners: Evidence from Spanish Social Security Records," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 697-725, July.
    5. Rautio, Nina & Heikkinen, Eino & Ebrahim, Shah, 2005. "Socio-economic position and its relationship to physical capacity among elderly people living in Jyväskylä, Finland: five- and ten-year follow-up studies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(11), pages 2405-2416, June.
    6. Salmasi, Luca & Celidoni, Martina, 2017. "Investigating the poverty-obesity paradox in Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 70-85.
    7. Chen, Xi & Yan, Binjian & Gill, Thomas M., 2020. "Childhood Circumstances and Health Inequality in Old Age: Comparative Evidence from China and the United States," GLO Discussion Paper Series 594, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Nicholas Kofi Adjei & Tilman Brand & Hajo Zeeb, 2017. "Gender inequality in self-reported health among the elderly in contemporary welfare countries: A cross-country analysis of time use activities, socioeconomic positions and family characteristics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-24, September.
    9. Yan, Binjian & Chen, Xi & Gill, Thomas M., 2020. "Health inequality among Chinese older adults: The role of childhood circumstances," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    10. Mads Meier Jæger & Anders Holm, "undated". "How Stressful is Retirement? New Evidence from a Longitudinal, Fixed-effects Analysis," CAM Working Papers 2004-19, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics, revised Sep 2004.
    11. Xi Chen & Binjian Yan & Thomas M. Gill, 2022. "Childhood Circumstances and Health Inequality in Old Age: Comparative Evidence from China and the USA," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 689-716, April.
    12. Adena, Maja & Myck, Michal, 2014. "Poverty and transitions in health in later life," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 202-210.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:44:y:1997:i:6:p:871-881. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.