Aspects Of Socioeconomic Status Research Articles

Parents With Low Literacy Report Higher Quality of Parent-Provider Relationships in a Residency Clinic

Quality of care in pediatrics is suboptimal for many children from families of low socioeconomic status. Literacy is one aspect of socioeconomic status. We hypothesized that low parental literacy would be associated with low-quality well-child care. We performed a cross-sectional study of caregivers of 1- to 4- year-old children in a pediatric resident clinic. To assess parental literacy, we used the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine. To assess the quality of well-child care, we used 5 subscales from the Promoting Healthy Development Survey relevant to either provider-parent relationships or content of discussions in the well-child visit. We enrolled 157 caregivers. The mean age of the respondents was 30 years, 55% were African American, 69% received Medicaid, and 85% had graduated high school. A total of 34% of the respondents scored below a ninth-grade reading level (low literacy). Parents with low literacy were more likely than those with higher literacy to report Family-centered care (79% vs 61%, P = .03), and Helpfulness and Confidence building (79% vs 57%, P = .01). There was no difference, by literacy level, in the percentage of parents who reported reaching established threshold levels for discussion of Psychosocial issues, Safety issues, or Anticipatory guidance topics. The lower-literacy respondents reported higher-quality parent-provider relationships; there was no difference in quality of content of discussions by literacy level. Parents with low literacy may have lower expectations regarding relationships with their health care provider or may be less likely to be critical. Alternatively, pediatric residents may be more effective at relationship building with low-literacy families.

Association Among Individual Deprivation, Glycemic Control, and Diabetes Complications

Previous studies have related poor glycemic control and/or some diabetes complications to low socioeconomic status. Some aspects of socioeconomic status have not been assessed in these studies. In the present study, we used an individual index of deprivation, the Evaluation de la Précarité et des Inégalités de santé dans les Centres d'Examens de Santé (Evaluation of Precarity and Inequalities in Health Examination Centers [EPICES]) score, to determine the relationship among glycemic control, diabetes complications, and individual conditions of deprivation. We conducted a cross-sectional prevalence study in 135 consecutive diabetic patients (age 59.41 +/- 13.2 years [mean +/- SD]) admitted in the hospitalization unit of a French endocrine department. Individual deprivation was assessed by the EPICES score, calculated from 11 socioeconomic questions. Glycemic control, lipid levels, blood pressure, retinopathy, neuropathy, and nephropathy were assessed. HbA(1c) level was significantly correlated with the EPICES score (r = 0.366, P < 0.001). The more deprived patients were more likely than the less deprived patients to have poor glycemic control (beta = 1.984 [SE 0.477], P < 0.001), neuropathy (odds ratio 2.39 [95% CI 1.05-5.43], P = 0.037), retinopathy (3.66 [1.39-9.64], P = 0.009), and being less often admitted for 1-day hospitalization (0.32 [0.14-0.74], P = 0.008). No significant relationship was observed with either nephropathy or cardiovascular risk factors. Deprivation status is associated with poor metabolic control and more frequent microvascular complications, i.e., retinopathy and neuropathy. The medical and economic burden of deprived patients is high.

Socioeconomic gradients in health status over 29 years of follow-up after midlife: the Alameda county study

Socioeconomic status is well known to be associated with inverse gradients in a wide range of health outcomes. Very little is known about the precise shape of these relationships and how they evolve through the life-course, although recent work has suggested steep non-linearities for mortality in samples of the entire population that include the very poor. We investigate the shape of gradients, against baseline family income, in gender-specific prevalence rates for seven self-reported health outcomes commonly used on surveys, in a cohort of 1190 men and 1302 women representative of Alameda County, California, aged 40–59 in 1965. Over 29 years of follow-up, four different prevalence-income gradients among surviving subjects are examined as this cohort has aged, in 1965, 1974, 1983 and 1994. Virtually all the gradients are inverse, although there is no simple pattern of shape, or evolution of shape over time, across health outcomes. However, there is a consistent trend for male gradients to be distinctly more non-linear than female gradients, such that the poorest men show disproportionately higher rates of ill health, based on generalized linear piecewise regression models, comparing the low versus high-income slopes of the gradients. However, sub-analyses of only those long-lived cohort members, who survived through all follow-ups, largely abolished the non-linearities in the male prevalence curves (except for “self-assessed health status” and “depression”), making them much more like female curves. This suggests that for all of these common forms of morbidity, the excess prevalence among very low income males was associated with elevated mortality. Confirmation of this observation must await richer data on other aspects of socioeconomic status in comparable cohorts, analyzed with similar methods.

Which aspects of socio-economic status are related to health in mid-aged and older women?

A population-based study was conducted to validate gender- and age-specific indexes of socio-economic status (SES) and to investigate the associations between these indexes and a range of health outcomes in 2 age cohorts of women. Data from 11,637 women aged 45 to 50 and 9,510 women aged 70 to 75 were analyzed. Confirmatory factor analysis produced four domains of SES among the mid-aged cohort (employment, family unit, education, and migration) and four domains among the older cohort (family unit, income, education, and migration). Overall, the results supported the factor structures derived from another population-based study (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1995), reinforcing the argument that SES domains differ across age groups. In general, the findings also supported the hypotheses that women with low SES would have poorer health outcomes than higher SES women, and that the magnitude of these effects would differ according to the specific SES domain and by age group, with fewer and smaller differences observed among older women. The main exception was that in the older cohort, the education domain was significantly associated with specific health conditions. Results suggest that relations between SES and health are highly complex and vary by age, SES domain, and the health outcome under study.

Which aspects of socioeconomic status are related to obesity among men and women?

This study aimed to investigate the relationships between body weight and fat distribution, and four empirically derived domains of socioeconomic status: employment, housing, migration status and family unit. A population-based study was used. A total of 8667 randomly-selected adults (4167 men; 4500 women) who participated in the 1995 Australian National Health and Nutrition Surveys provided data on a range of health factors including objective height, weight and body fat distribution, and a range of sociodemographic indicators. Results demonstrated associations for women, after controlling for age, between the employment domain, and body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. Low status employed women were 1.4 times as likely to be overweight as high status employed women. There were less consistent relationships observed among these factors for men. Relationships between family unit and indicators of body weight and body fat distribution were observed for both men and women, with those who were married, particularly men (OR = 1.6, 95% CI 1.4-2.0), at higher risk of overweight. The migration and housing socioeconomic status domains were not consistently associated with body mass index or waist-to-hip ratio. These findings indicate that different components of socioeconomic status may be important in predicting obesity, and thus should be examined separately. Future research would benefit from investigating the underlying mechanisms governing the relationships between socioeconomic status domains further, particularly those related to employment and family unit and obesity.

Excess mortality from avoidable and non-avoidable causes in men of low socioeconomic status: a prospective study in Korea

STUDY OBJECTIVEThe objective of this study was to evaluate the magnitude and contributory factors of socioeconomic differentials in mortality in a cohort of Korean male civil servants.DESIGNA prospective observational study...

Race, socioeconomic status, and health: accounting for race differences in health.

This article uses the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study to examine the extent to which observed differences in the prevalence of chronic conditions and functional limitations between Black and White adults (aged 70+) in the United States can be attributed to differences in various aspects of socioeconomic status (SES) between these groups. We use linear and logistic regression techniques to model the relationships between health outcomes and SES. Our findings indicate that race differences in measurable socioeconomic characteristics indeed explain a substantial fraction, but in general not all, of Black/White differences in health status. While our findings do not suggest that low SES directly "causes" poor health, any more than being Black does so, they do suggest that research and policy intended to address the deficit in health status among Blacks (when compared to Whites) in the U.S. would be well-served to begin with the deficit in wealth, education, and other SES measures.

Occupation and the occurrence of testicular cancer

To investigate what role a man's occupation may have on his risk of testicular cancer, we conducted a case-control study among noncryptorchid white males who were between 20 and 69 years of age and resided in western Washington State. Cases were men in whom a germ cell tumor of the testis was diagnosed between 1977 and 1984 (n = 323). Their occupational histories were compared to those of controls of the same age, race, and geographic area who were selected through random-digit dialing (n = 658). Administrators/managers (relative risk (RR) = 1.5), salesmen (RR = 1.5), electricians (RR = 2.8), and sailors and fishermen (RR = 3.1) were among the jobs reported more commonly by cases than controls. The risk among farmers/farm managers was also elevated (RR = 1.9), but not that among farm workers (RR = 0.6). No consistent association between any one occupation and testicular cancer has been observed across studies of this topic. The most frequent observation has been an over-representation among cases of certain types of white collar worker; this may reflect the influence of some other aspect of socioeconomic status and not occupational exposures per se.

Academic Achievement and Teaching Younger Siblings

The idea that teaching younger siblings encourages the intellectual development of the older child is investigated. A self-report measure of teaching younger siblings is developed and tested for effects on academic achievement in reading, language, and mathematics in a multivariate analysis of covariance, using data from a sample of seventhand ninth-grade public school students in a medium-sized southeastern metropolitan area. The analysis controls race, sex, year in school, and aspects of socioeconomic status, family configuration, and interaction with younger siblings. Students who report more than a minimal amount of teaching younger siblings are significantly higher than others in reading and language achievement. Furthermore, students with younger siblings who report very little teaching of those siblings are the only group with younger siblings who are significantly lower in reading and language achievement than students without younger siblings. The findings suggest that a moderate amount of teaching younger siblings may counteract any negative effects of the presence of younger siblings. There are no significant interactions between teaching and any of the control variables.

Aspects of socio-economic status which differentiate university students.

Aspects of socio-economic status which differentiate university students.

The quantitative measurement of certain aspects of socio-economic status.

The quantitative measurement of certain aspects of socio-economic status.