Objective: To investigate prevalence of poor self-rated health and its association with individual and household-level characteristics among adults and elderly in Brazil.
Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with Brazilian National Household Sample Survey 2008 (n=257 816). Crude and multilevel-adjusted Poisson regression models were fitted.
Results: After adjusted analysis, poor self-rated health was significantly associated with higher household income, living alone, not having piped water nor garbage collection, lower education, not having health insurance, female sex, higher age, being a current or previous smoker, physical inactivity, having chronic diseases, having physical impairment. Subjects living in rural areas also had higher prevalence of poor self-rated health. The factors most strongly associated with the outcome were physical impairment and reporting three or more chronic diseases.
Conclusions: Socioeconomic, health related behaviors, and physical health were associated with poor self-rated health.