When does poor subjective financial position hurt the elderly? Testing the interaction with educational attainment using a national representative longitudinal survey

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Yiing-Jenq Chou¹  Christy Pu²  Nicole Huang²  Gao-Jun Tang³ 

[1] Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan;Institute of Hospital and Health Care Administration, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Hospital and Health Care Administration, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;National Yang-Ming University Hospital, Yi-Lan, Taiwan;

关键词: aged;    education;    health;    depressive symptoms;    mortality;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-166

 received in 2010-05-07, accepted in 2011-03-17,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSeveral studies have demonstrated that perceived financial status has a significant impact on health status among the elderly. However, little is known about whether such a subjective perception interacts with objective socioeconomic status (SES) measures such as education that affect the individual's health.MethodsThis research used data from the Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle Age and Elderly in Taiwan (SHLS) conducted by the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health in Taiwan. Waves 1996, 1999 and 2003 were used. The sample consisted of 2,387 elderly persons. The interactive effects of self-rated satisfaction with financial position and educational attainment were estimated. Self-rated health (SRH), depressive symptom (measured by CES-D) and mortality were used to measure health outcomes.ResultsSignificant interaction effect was found for depressive symptoms. Among those who were dissatisfied with their financial position, those who were illiterate had an odds ratio (OR) of 8.3 (95% CI 4.9 to 14.0) for having depressive symptoms compared with those who were very satisfied with their financial position. The corresponding OR for those with college or above was only 2.7 (95% CI 1.0 to 7.3). No significant interaction effect was found for SRH and mortality.ConclusionsAlthough poor financial satisfaction was found to be related to poorer health, the strongest association for this effect was observed among those with low educational attainment, and this is especially true for depressive symptoms. Subjective financial status among the elderly should be explored in conjunction with traditional measures of SES.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Pu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.