Dataset Information

Subjective Health and Happiness in the United States: Gender Differences in the Effects of Socioeconomic Status Indicators.

ABSTRACT: Background:Education, employment, and marital status are among the main socioeconomic status (SES) indicators that are associated with subjective health and happiness. The effects of these SES indicators may, however, be different for various demographic groups. Aims:To understand if SES indicators differently impact men and women, we tested gender differences in the effects of education, employment, and marital status on the subjective health and happiness of American adults. Methods:This cross-sectional study used data of the General Social Survey (GSS), a series of nationally representative surveys between 1972 and 2018 in the US. Our analytical sample included 65,814 adults. The main independent variables were education attainment, marital status, and employment. Outcomes were self-rated health (SRH) and happiness measured using single items. Age and year of the study were covariates. Gender was the moderator. Results:Overall, high education, being employed, and being married were associated with better SRH and happiness. We, however, found significant interactions between gender and educational attainment, marital status, and employment on the outcomes, which suggested that the effect of high education and marital status were stronger for women. In comparison, the effect of employment was stronger for men. Some inconsistencies in the results were observed for SRH compared to happiness. Conclusions:In the United States, while education, employment, and marital status are critical social determinants of subjective health and happiness, these effects vary between women and men. Men's outcomes seem to be more strongly shaped by employment, while women's outcomes are more strongly shaped by education and marital status.

SUBMITTER: Maharlouei N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7304555 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Subjective Health and Happiness in the United States: Gender Differences in the Effects of Socioeconomic Status Indicators.

Maharlouei Najmeh N Cobb Sharon S Bazargan Mohsen M Assari Shervin S

Journal of mental health & clinical psychology 20200514 2

<h4>Background</h4>Education, employment, and marital status are among the main socioeconomic status (SES) indicators that are associated with subjective health and happiness. The effects of these SES indicators may, however, be different for various demographic groups.<h4>Aims</h4>To understand if SES indicators differently impact men and women, we tested gender differences in the effects of education, employment, and marital status on the subjective health and happiness of American adults.<h4> ...[more]

PMID: 32568256

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Project description:BackgroundSubjective "ladder" measurements of socio-economic status (SES) are easy-to-administer tools that ask respondents to rate their own SES, allowing them to evaluate their own material resources and determine where it places them relative to their community. Here, we sought to compare the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social status to the WAMI, an objective measure of SES that includes data on water and sanitation, asset ownership, education, and income.MethodsLeveraging a study of 595 tuberculosis patients in Lima, Peru, we compared the MacArthur ladder score to the WAMI score using weighted Kappa scores and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. We identified outliers that fell outside the 95th percentile and assessed the durability of the inconsistencies between scores by re-testing a subset of participants. We then used Akaike information criterion (AIC) to compare the predictability of logistic regression models evaluating the association between the two SES scoring systems and history of asthma.ResultsThe correlation coefficient between the MacArthur ladder and WAMI scores was 0.37 and the weighted Kappa was 0.26. The correlation coefficients differed by less than 0.04 and the Kappa ranged from 0.26 to 0.34, indicating fair agreement. When we replaced the initial MacArthur ladder scores with retest scores, the number of individuals with disagreements between the two scores decreased from 21 to 10 and the correlation coefficient and weighted Kappa both increased by at least 0.03. Lastly, we found that when we categorized WAMI and MacArthur ladder scores into three groups, both had a linear trend association with history of asthma with effect sizes and AICs that differed by less than 15% and 2 points, respectively.ConclusionOur findings demonstrated fair agreement between the MacArthur ladder and WAMI scores. The agreement between the two SES measurements increased when they were further categorized into 3-5 categories, the form in which SES is often used in epidemiologic studies. The MacArthur score also performed similarly to WAMI in predicting a socio-economically sensitive health outcome. Researchers should consider subjective SES tools as an alternative method for measuring SES, particularly in large health studies where data collection is a burden.

Dataset Information

Subjective Health and Happiness in the United States: Gender Differences in the Effects of Socioeconomic Status Indicators.

Publications

Subjective Health and Happiness in the United States: Gender Differences in the Effects of Socioeconomic Status Indicators.

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