Abstract
BackgroundMore so than the traditional socioeconomic indicators, such as education and income, wealth reflects the accumulation of resources and makes socioeconomic ranking manifest and explicitly visible to the outside world. While the lack of basic goods, such as a refrigerator, may affect health directly, via biological pathways, the lack of luxury goods, such as an LCD television, may affect health indirectly through psychosocial mechanisms. We set out to examine, firstly, the relevance of both basic and luxury goods in explaining health-related dysfunction in older persons, and, secondly, the extent to which these associations are independent of traditional socioeconomic indicators.MethodsCross-sectional and longitudinal data from 2067 men and women aged 55 years and older who participated in the Study on Medical Information and Lifestyles Eindhoven (SMILE) were gathered. Logistic regression analyses were used to study the relation between a lack of basic and luxury goods and health-related function, assessed with two sub-domains of the SF-36.ResultsThe lack of basic goods was closely related to incident physical (OR = 2.32) and mental (OR = 2.12) dysfunction, even when the traditional measures of socioeconomic status, i.e. education or income, were taken into account. Cross-sectional analyses, in which basic and luxury goods were compared, showed that the lack of basic goods was strongly associated with mental dysfunction. Lack of luxury goods was, however, not related to dysfunction.ConclusionEven in a relatively wealthy country like the Netherlands, the lack of certain basic goods is not uncommon. More importantly, lack of basic goods, as an indicator of wealth, was strongly related to health-related dysfunction also when traditional measures of socioeconomic status were taken into account. In contrast, no effects of luxury goods on physical or mental dysfunction were found. Future longitudinal research is necessary to clarify the precise mechanisms underlying these effects.
Highlights
More so than the traditional socioeconomic indicators, such as education and income, wealth reflects the accumulation of resources and makes socioeconomic ranking manifest and explicitly visible to the outside world
Design Data came from the longitudinal SMILE study (i.e. Study on Medical Information and Lifestyles Eindhoven), which started in November 2002 as a joint project of Maastricht University and the Eindhoven Corporation of Primary Health Care Centres
Similar associations were found for the lack of luxury goods
Summary
More so than the traditional socioeconomic indicators, such as education and income, wealth reflects the accumulation of resources and makes socioeconomic ranking manifest and explicitly visible to the outside world. We set out to examine, firstly, the relevance of both basic and luxury goods in explaining health-related dysfunction in older persons, and, secondly, the extent to which these associations are independent of traditional socioeconomic indicators. Less clear is whether this holds for older populations of whom many are retired and not in the paid labour force anymore [3,4] In such populations, wealth may be a more valid indicator of socioeconomic ranking than the traditional indicators of socio-economic status, such as education and income. Through being wealthy or not, socioeconomic ranking becomes explicitly visible to the outside world, more than through variations in educational and income level. Possession of goods, such as a car and a house, may be an explicit projection of how wealthy a household is
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