Measuring health inequalities: implications of choosing different socioeconomic indicators

• Autor(a) principal: Maria Laura Braccini Fagundes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Orlando Luiz do Amaral Júnior, Gabriele Rissotto Menegazzo, Fernando Neves Hugo, Jessye Melgarejo do Amaral Giordani
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Cadernos de Saúde Pública
• Texto Completo: https://cadernos.ensp.fiocruz.br/ojs/index.php/csp/article/view/8039
• topic: Health Surveys; Research Design; Social Determinants of Health; Socioeconomic Factors; Inquéritos Epidemiológicos; Projetos de Pesquisa; Determinantes Sociais da Saúde; Fatores Socioeconômicos; Encuestas Epidemiológicas; Proyectos de Investigación; Determinantes Sociales de la Salud; Factores Socioeconómicos

We aimed to verify the association between different socioeconomic indicators and self-rated health in a nationally representative sample of older adults. This cross-sectional study analyzed the baseline data from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil), a population-based cohort study of persons aged 50 years or older. Data was collected using a household and an individual questionnaire at participants’ households. Self-rated health was assessed by a global self-rating item. Three socioeconomic indicators were assessed: individual income, per capita household income, and wealth index. Poisson regression models were performed to estimate the prevalence ratio (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) of self-rated health and each socioeconomic indicator, adjusting for covariates. In total, 9,390 older adults answered the outcome question. Whilst for the individual income indicator only the richest quintile showed a statistically significant association with the outcome (PR: 0.90; 95%CI: 0.87; 0.93), for the per capita household income, the fourth (PR: 0.95; 95%CI: 0.91; 0.98) and the fifth quintiles (PR: 0.90; 95%CI: 0.86; 0.94) remained associated with the outcome. Regarding the wealth index, only the second quintile was not associated with the outcome, with lower prevalence of poor self-rated health as richer was the quintile, showing a social gradient. The wealth index seems to be a more adequate indicator, as it reflects resources accumulated over the life course.