Effects of Childhood and Current Socioeconomic Status on Health of Older Adults in India, China, Ghana, Mexico, Russia and South Africa: An Analysis of WHO-SAGE Data

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) has occupied a central stage in predicting the health of the population, even in old age the association continues; however, the role childhood SES remains unclear in developing countries. Using the data of aged 50 and above drawn from WHO-SAGE-20070-10 wave 1, this study assess the effect of childhood SES and current SES on subjective health measures in six LMICs: India, China, Ghana, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. Parental education is used as the indicator of childhood SES and household wealth and individual education are used as the measures of current SES. Poor self-rated health (SRH) and limitations in activities of daily living (ADLs) are used as the measure of subjective health. Logistic regression analysis is used to examine the effect of indicators of adult and childhood SES on poor SRH and ADL limitations. Results show considerable variations across nations in the prevalence of poor health status. The poor SRH was high in Russia and India. Also, the larger proportion of older adults in India, Ghana, Mexico and South Africa had 1 + ADL. Higher socioeconomic status is associated with less poor health and ADL limitations. Further, our results suggest that the mother’s education had a significant and independent effect on self-rated health and ADL limitations. Our findings confirm the association of education, wealth and mother’s education with subjective health measures, moreover the association with self-rated health stronger than the 1 + ADL limitation. This result therefore reiterate the importance of childhood and current SES on health, thus suggest the life course intervention to improve the health of the older population in LMICs.