Impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on overall and health-related quality of life.

Jae-Hyun Kim,Eun-Cheol Park

doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2014-9

Abstract

BackgroundOur objective was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) vs. overall quality of life (QOL).MethodsWe performed a longitudinal analysis using data regarding 8250 individuals drawn from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). We analyzed differences between HRQOL and QOL in individuals of various socioeconomic strata (high, middle, or low household income and education levels) and subjective social classes (high, middle, or low) at baseline (2009).ResultsIndividuals with low household incomes and of low subjective social class had the highest probability of reporting discrepant HRQOL and QOL scores (B: 4.796; P < 0.0001), whereas individuals with high household incomes and high subjective social class had the lowest probability of discrepant HRQOL and QOL scores (B: −3.625; P = 0.000). Similar trends were seen when education was used as a proxy for socioeconomic status.ConclusionIn conclusion, both household income/subjective social class and education/subjective social class were found to have an impact on the degree of divergence between QOL and HRQOL. Therefore, in designing interventions, socioeconomic inequalities should be taken into account through the use of multi-dimensional measurement tools.

Highlights

Our objective was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) vs. overall quality of life (QOL)
We found that gaps between income and subjective social class were associated with increased differences between HRQOL and QOL, as were gaps between education and subjective social class
Our results indicated that within any socioeconomic stratum, those of low subjective social class tended to exhibit a greater difference between HRQOL and QOL scores

Summary

Introduction

Our objective was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) vs. overall quality of life (QOL). The association between SES and health outcomes persists across the life cycle [6] and across multiple measures of health, including health status [7], morbidity [8], mortality [9], self-assessed health [3, 10], and disease prevalence [11]. Many investigators find it difficult to ascertain which measures of SES are valid, which can be applied to multiple outcomes, and which are most relevant for specific conditions. Previous research indicates that a higher level of education is associated with increased understanding of prostate health [14] and reduced pelvic function distress [15]

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