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International Journal for Equity in Health
Published in: International Journal for Equity in Health 1/2017

Open Access 01-12-2017 | Research

Subjective social status, social network and health disparities: empirical evidence from Greece

Authors: Antonios Charonis, Ilias-Ioannis Kyriopoulos, Manos Spanakis, Dimitris Zavras, Kostas Athanasakis, Elpida Pavi, John Kyriopoulos

Published in: International Journal for Equity in Health | Issue 1/2017

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Abstract

Background

Several studies suggest that socioeconomic status affects (SES) affects self-rated health (SRH), both in Greece and internationally. However, prior research mainly uses objective measures of SES, instead of subjective evaluations of individuals’ social status. Based on this, this paper aims to examine (a) the impact of the economic dowturn on SRH in Greece and (b) the relationship between subjective social status (SSS), social network and SRH.

Methods

The descriptive analysis is based on four cross-sectional surveys conducted by the National School of Public Health, Athens, Greece (2002, 2006, 2011, 2015), while the data for the empirical investigation were derived from the 2015 survey (Health + Welfare Survey GR). The empirical strategy is based on an ordinal logistic regression model, aiming to examine how several variables affect SRH. Size of social network and SSS are among the independent variables employed for the empirical analysis

Results

According to our findings, average SRH has deteriorated, and the percentage of the population that reports very good/good SRH has also decreased. Moreover, our empirical analysis suggests that age, existence of a chronic disease, size of social network and SSS affect SRH in Greece.

Conclusion

Our findings are consistent with the existing literature and confirm a social gradient in health. According to our analysis, health disparities can be largely attributed to socioeconomic inequalities. The adverse economic climate has impact on socioeconomic differences which in turn affect health disparities. Based on these, policy initiatives are necessasy in order to mitigate the negative impact on health and the disparities caused by economic dowturn and the occuring socioeconomic inequalities.
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Metadata
Title
Subjective social status, social network and health disparities: empirical evidence from Greece
Authors
Antonios Charonis
Ilias-Ioannis Kyriopoulos
Manos Spanakis
Dimitris Zavras
Kostas Athanasakis
Elpida Pavi
John Kyriopoulos
Publication date
01-12-2017
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
International Journal for Equity in Health / Issue 1/2017
Electronic ISSN: 1475-9276
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0533-y

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