Feeling discriminated means poor self-perceived health: a gender analysis using SHARE

Most part of the literature has highlighted the detrimental effects of discrimination on health. However, the influence of past and perceived discrimination on older workers’ self-assessed health has been understudied. Firstly, we aim at studying whether reported discrimination is associated with self-assessed health among adults of working ages (50–65 years of age). Secondly, we analyze the existence of differences by gender. Data was retrieved from the seventh wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to obtain the regular panel of questions, and the third and seventh waves of the SHARELIFE questionnaire, that includes information about discrimination (n = 30,019). We develop logistic regression models to determine the relationship of discrimination on male and female workers’ self-assessed health separately. Our results show that 49.0% of our sample was composed of highly discriminated women, while the remaining percentage covered men and women (42.3% males and 8.7% females) that reported lower levels of discrimination. Our estimations reveal a significant association between discrimination and poor health status, especially in the case of men ranging from OR = 1.802 (95% CI 1.502–2.163) to OR = 1.565 (95% CI 1.282–1.910). In the case of women our results range from OR = 1.728 (95% CI 1.463–2.040) to OR = 1.196 (95% CI 0.992–1.442). These findings are essential to highlight the importance of tackling discrimination as a determinant of health that negatively affects both sexes, men and women.