Affiliation:
1. Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden
2. Department of Public Health Sciences, Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS), Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
Abstract
Objectives
Researchers frequently use the “age-as-leveler” hypothesis to explain decreasing inequality and a weakened relationship between socioeconomic position and health in old age. This study examined whether health status can explain the age pattern in the association between income and mortality as predicted by the age-as-leveler hypothesis.
Method
This study used longitudinal (1991–2002) data from the SWEOLD and LNU surveys. The analytical sample consisted of 2,619 people aged 54–92 in 2003. Mortality (2003–2014) and income (1991–2000) was collected from Swedish national registers. Poisson regression was used to estimate associations between mortality, income, age, and health status. Average marginal effects were used to visualize interaction effects between income and age.
Results
The association between income and mortality weakened in those aged 84 and older. However, health status explained a large part of the effect that age had on the association between income and mortality. Analyses done after stratifying the sample by health status showed that the association between income and mortality was strong in people who reported good health and weak or nonexistent in those who reported poor health.
Discussion
Age leveled the income–mortality association; however, health status, not age, explained most of the leveling.
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Subject
Geriatrics and Gerontology,Gerontology,Clinical Psychology,Social Psychology
Reference46 articles.
1. Converging health inequalities in later life—An artifact of mortality selection;Beckett;Journal of Health and Social Behavior,,2000
2. Health, double jeopardy, and culture: The use of institutionalization by African-Americans;Belgrave;The Gerontologist,,1993
3. Do social inequalities in health widen or converge with age? Longitudinal evidence from three cohorts in the West of Scotland;Benzeval;BMC Public Health,,2011
4. Social inequality and incidence of and survival from malignant melanoma in a population-based study in Denmark, 1994–2003;Birch-Johansen;European Journal of Cancer (Oxford, England: 1990),,2008
5. Life‐cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime income: Replication and extension for Sweden;Böhlmark;Journal of Labor Economics,2006
Cited by
17 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献