Abstract
The relative income hypothesis predicts poorer health in societies with greater income inequality. This article examines whether the psychosocial factors of perceived age discrimination and (lack of) social capital may help explain the adverse effect of inequality on older people's health. Self-rated health, perceived age discrimination, and social capital were assessed in the 2008/9 European Social Survey (European Social Survey Round 4 Data, 2008). The Gini coefficient was used to represent national inequalities in income in each of the 28 European Social Survey countries. Mediation analyses (within a multilevel structural equation modeling paradigm) on a subsample of respondents over 70 years of age (N = 7,819) were used to examine whether perceived age discrimination mediates the negative effect of income inequality on older people's self-rated health. Perceived age discrimination fully mediated the associations between income inequality and self-rated health. When social capital was included into the model, only age discrimination remained a significant mediator and predictor of self-rated health. Concrete instances of age discrimination in unequal societies are an important psychosocial stressor for older people. Awareness that the perception of ageism can be an important stressor and affect older patient's self-reported health has important implications for the way health practitioners understand and treat the sources of patient's health problems in later life.
Highlights
To date, no studies have tested whether perceived age discrimination explains the inequality–health relationship in older adults and whether it explains the inequality–health link above and beyond the role of social capital. We address this gap by testing the extent to which perceived age discrimination and social capital mediate the inequality–health nexus for older adults using a large set of cross-sectional data from countries belonging to the European region (European Social Survey Round 4 Data, 2008)
We focus on the psychosocial pathway as we are dealing with highly developed countries (United Nations Development Programme, 2011), in which it is especially important for health practitioners and policymakers to know whether and what kinds of psychosocial factors explain the inequality–health link for older people
Income inequality correlates with self-rated ill-health at r = .40, p < .05 and it shares 16% of the variance with self-rated health of older adults
Summary
The relative income hypothesis predicts poorer health in societies with greater income inequality.This article examines whether the psychosocial factors of perceived age discrimination and (lack of) social capital may help explain the adverse effect of inequality on older people’s health. Self-rated health, perceived age discrimination, and social capital were assessed in the 2008/9 European Social Survey (European Social Survey Round 4 Data, 2008). Mediation analyses (within a multilevel structural equation modeling paradigm) on a subsample of respondents over 70 years of age (N = 7,819) were used to examine whether perceived age discrimination mediates the negative effect of income inequality on older people’s self-rated health. Perceived age discrimination fully mediated the associations between income inequality and self-rated health. When social capital was included into the model, only age discrimination remained a signiicant mediator and predictor of self-rated health. Awareness that the perception of ageism can be an important stressor and affect older patient’s self-reported health has important implications for the way health practitioners understand and treat the sources of patient’s health problems in later life
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