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Educational level and changes in health across Europe: longitudinal results from SHARE
- Authors:
- AVENDANO Mauricio, JURGES Henrik, MACKENBACH Johan P.
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of European Social Policy, 19(4), October 2009, pp.301-316.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article examines cross-national variations in the impact of educational levels on changes in self-rated health in the population aged 50 years and over in European countries. The data used in the study was drawn from the first and second waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which was designed to provide comparable multidisciplinary data across European countries. Analyses were performed separately for Northern, Western and Southern Europe, as these regions broadly represent different welfare states. The hypothesis was that socio-economic status would be less strongly associated with health changes in Nordic states, where the social democratic welfare policies would translate into less health disadvantage for those with low socio-economic status, than in the Southern European welfare regimes with less generous welfare provisions. The results found that over a 2-year period, low education was associated with higher incidence of poor health, chronic diseases and disability, but was less consistently associated with new events of long-standing illness. Educational effects were more consistent in Western and Southern Europe than in the Nordic welfare states. In Northern Europe, lower education is associated with less financial and employment disadvantage than in Southern or Western Europe. After controlling for educational differences, the effects of educational level on health deterioration remained significant for most outcomes in Western and Southern Europe, whereas they were weaker and non-significant after adjustment in Northern Europe.