Dataset Information

Poverty, wealth inequality and health among older adults in rural Cambodia.

ABSTRACT: Little research exists on health determinants among adults living in economically deprived regions despite the fact that these areas comprise a good part of the world. This paper examines the distribution of wealth then tests associations between wealth inequality and a variety of health outcomes, among older adults, in one of the world's poorest regions--rural Cambodia. Data from the 2004 Survey of the Elderly in Cambodia are employed. Using a disablement framework to conceptualize health, associations between four health components and a wealth inequality measure are tested. The wealth inequality measure is based on an index that operationalizes wealth as ownership of household assets and household structural components. Results confirm difficult economic conditions in rural Cambodia. The lowest wealth quintile lives in households that own nothing, while the next quintiles are only slightly better off. Nevertheless, logistic regressions that adjust for other covariates indicate heterogeneity in health across quintiles that appear qualitatively similar, with the bottom quintiles reporting the most health problems. An exception is disability, which presents a U-shaped association. It is difficult to determine mechanisms behind the relationship using cross-sectional data, but the paper speculates on possible causal directions, both from wealth to health and vice-versa. The analysis suggests the ability to generalize the relationship between wealth inequality and health to extremely poor populations as a very small difference in wealth makes a relatively large difference with respect to health associations among those in meager surroundings.

SUBMITTER: Zimmer Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2171035 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Poverty, wealth inequality and health among older adults in rural Cambodia.

Zimmer Zachary Z

Social science & medicine (1982) 20071029 1

Little research exists on health determinants among adults living in economically deprived regions despite the fact that these areas comprise a good part of the world. This paper examines the distribution of wealth then tests associations between wealth inequality and a variety of health outcomes, among older adults, in one of the world's poorest regions--rural Cambodia. Data from the 2004 Survey of the Elderly in Cambodia are employed. Using a disablement framework to conceptualize health, asso ...[more]

PMID: 17913320

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Project description:BackgroundAustralians born in 2012 can expect to live about 33 years longer than those born 100 years earlier. However, only seven of these additional years are spent in the workforce. Longer life expectancy has driven policies to extend working life and increase retirement age; the current Australian policy, which has increased the eligibility for the pension from 65 to 67 by 2023, assumes that an improvement in longevity corresponds with an improvement in healthy life expectancy. However, there is mixed evidence of health trends in Australia over the past two decades. Although some health outcomes are improving among older age groups, many are either stable or deteriorating. This raises a question of how health trends intersect with policy for older Australians aged from 50 to 70. This paper considers the interplay between older workers' health and workforce participation rates over the past 15 years when extended workforce participation has been actively encouraged.MethodsWe compared health and economic outcomes of the older people in following years with the base year (start of the study period), adjusting for some key socio-economic characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, education and equivalized household income by applying the Random effects estimator with maximum likelihood estimation technique.ResultsWe find that regardless of increasing longevity, the health of older adults aged between 50 and 70 has slightly deteriorated. In addition, health gaps between those who were working into their older age and those who were not have widened over the 15-year period. Finally, we find that widening health gaps linked to workforce participation are also accompanied by rising economic inequality in incomes, financial assets and superannuation. With the exception of a small group of healthy and very wealthy retirees, the majority of the older Australians who were not working had low incomes, assets, superannuation, and poor health.ConclusionsThe widening economic and health gap within older population over time indicates a clear and urgent need to add policy actions on income and health, to those that seek to increase workforce participation among older adults.

Dataset Information

Poverty, wealth inequality and health among older adults in rural Cambodia.

Publications

Poverty, wealth inequality and health among older adults in rural Cambodia.

Similar Datasets

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