Cargando…
A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations
BACKGROUND: The persistence of health inequalities may not be merely driven by education and income, but also by other economic and non-economic factors. In this study we investigated how the association between single-dimensional health and socioeconomic status (SES) changes when including health-r...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9835475/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckac130.003 |
_version_ | 1784868674838986752 |
---|---|
author | Qi, Y Vrooman, JC Almansa, J Ots, P Brouwer, S Reijneveld, SA |
author_facet | Qi, Y Vrooman, JC Almansa, J Ots, P Brouwer, S Reijneveld, SA |
author_sort | Qi, Y |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The persistence of health inequalities may not be merely driven by education and income, but also by other economic and non-economic factors. In this study we investigated how the association between single-dimensional health and socioeconomic status (SES) changes when including health-related person capital, economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and non-health related person capital. METHODS: The present study proposes a capital-based approach to understand health inequalities. It presumes intertwined relationships between a wide notion of health (‘health-related person capital’) and embodied resources (‘non-health related person capital’) on the one hand, and non-person capital, i.e. economic, social, and cultural resources on the other. We used cross-sectional data on 152,592 participants from the Dutch Lifelines cohort study. Correlations between capital constructs were estimated using partial least squares structural equation modelling. RESULTS: The correlation between health-related person capital and SES (r = 0.15) was higher than the correlations between single-dimensional health (physical and mental health) and SES (r = 0.12, r = 0.04, respectively). Non-person capital, combining economic, social and cultural capital, showed a correlation of 0.34 with health-related person capital. This was higher than the correlation between health-related person capital and economic capital alone (r = 0.19). Lastly, the correlation between health-related person capital and non-person capital increased when non-health (personality and attractiveness) and health related person capital were combined into person capital construct (from r = 0.34 to r = 0.49). CONCLUSIONS: This exploratory observational study shows the empirical interconnectedness of various types of resources. Our findings corroborate the idea of considering health as a multidimensional concept, and to extend conventional SES indicators to a broader measurement of economic and non-economic resources. KEY MESSAGES: A wide notion of capital may be key to a better understanding of the persistence of health inequalities. Policy action needs to take into account the unequal distribution of economic, social, cultural, and person capital. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9835475 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98354752023-01-17 A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations Qi, Y Vrooman, JC Almansa, J Ots, P Brouwer, S Reijneveld, SA Eur J Public Health Poster Walks BACKGROUND: The persistence of health inequalities may not be merely driven by education and income, but also by other economic and non-economic factors. In this study we investigated how the association between single-dimensional health and socioeconomic status (SES) changes when including health-related person capital, economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and non-health related person capital. METHODS: The present study proposes a capital-based approach to understand health inequalities. It presumes intertwined relationships between a wide notion of health (‘health-related person capital’) and embodied resources (‘non-health related person capital’) on the one hand, and non-person capital, i.e. economic, social, and cultural resources on the other. We used cross-sectional data on 152,592 participants from the Dutch Lifelines cohort study. Correlations between capital constructs were estimated using partial least squares structural equation modelling. RESULTS: The correlation between health-related person capital and SES (r = 0.15) was higher than the correlations between single-dimensional health (physical and mental health) and SES (r = 0.12, r = 0.04, respectively). Non-person capital, combining economic, social and cultural capital, showed a correlation of 0.34 with health-related person capital. This was higher than the correlation between health-related person capital and economic capital alone (r = 0.19). Lastly, the correlation between health-related person capital and non-person capital increased when non-health (personality and attractiveness) and health related person capital were combined into person capital construct (from r = 0.34 to r = 0.49). CONCLUSIONS: This exploratory observational study shows the empirical interconnectedness of various types of resources. Our findings corroborate the idea of considering health as a multidimensional concept, and to extend conventional SES indicators to a broader measurement of economic and non-economic resources. KEY MESSAGES: A wide notion of capital may be key to a better understanding of the persistence of health inequalities. Policy action needs to take into account the unequal distribution of economic, social, cultural, and person capital. Oxford University Press 2022-10-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9835475/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckac130.003 Text en © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Poster Walks Qi, Y Vrooman, JC Almansa, J Ots, P Brouwer, S Reijneveld, SA A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title | A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title_full | A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title_fullStr | A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title_full_unstemmed | A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title_short | A capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
title_sort | capital-based approach to understand health inequalities: empirical explorations |
topic | Poster Walks |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9835475/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckac130.003 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT qiy acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT vroomanjc acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT almansaj acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT otsp acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT brouwers acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT reijneveldsa acapitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT qiy capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT vroomanjc capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT almansaj capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT otsp capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT brouwers capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations AT reijneveldsa capitalbasedapproachtounderstandhealthinequalitiesempiricalexplorations |