Social influences on trajectories of self-rated health: a comparative study of four OECD countries

Abstract

Objective: To describe average national trajectories of self-rated health over a 7-year period, identify social determinants of cross-sectional and longitudinal health; and compare cross-national patterns.
Design: Prospective nationally representative household panel studies (the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics; British Household Panel Survey; the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey; the Danish panel from the European Community Household Panel Survey).
Setting: The US, Britain, Germany and Denmark.
Participants:Household heads and their partners of working age throughout follow-up (US: 4855; Britain: 4365; Germany: 4694; Denmark: 3252).
Main Outcome Measure: Repeated measures of self-rated health (1995-2001). Social indicators include education, occupational class, employment status, income, age, gender, minority status and marital status, all measured in 1994.
Methods: Latent growth curve models describe average national trajectories of self-rated health and individual differences in these trajectories. Latent factors representing intercept and slope components are extracted from seven annual observations across time for self-rated health, and are conditioned on predictors measured one . . .