Socioeconomic inequality in health in older adults in Brazil

Raquel Alves Pérez; Cesar Augusto Oviedo Tejada; Lívia Madeira Triaca; Andréa Dâmaso Bertoldi; Anderson Moreira Aristides Dos Santos

doi:10.1016/j.dialog.2022.100009

Socioeconomic inequality in health in older adults in Brazil

Dialogues Health. 2022 Apr 12:1:100009. doi: 10.1016/j.dialog.2022.100009. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Authors

Raquel Alves Pérez¹, Cesar Augusto Oviedo Tejada¹, Lívia Madeira Triaca^{1

2}, Andréa Dâmaso Bertoldi³, Anderson Moreira Aristides Dos Santos⁴

Affiliations

¹ Posgraduate Program in Economics, Federal University of Pelotas (Universidade Federal de Pelotas - UFPel), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
² Department of Economics, Federal University of Rio Grande Foundation (Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande - FURG), Rio Grande, Brazil.
³ Postgraduate Program in Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas (Universidade Federal de Pelotas - UFPel), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
⁴ Posgraduate Program in Economics, Federal University of Alagoas (Universidade Federal de Alagoas - UFAL), Maceió, Brazil.

Abstract

Objective: This study analyzed socioeconomic inequality in self-rated health for older adults (aged fifty or over) in Brazil.

Methods: Data from the 2015-2016 Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil). Socioeconomic inequality in self-rated health was measured using the concentration index, which was decomposed to analyze the contribution of different factors.

Results: This study revealed that 11.5% of the older adults interviewed reported their health as poor and very poor. For the complete sample, the estimated concentration index, -0.2434, indicated that there is a concentration of poor and very poor self-rated health among older and poorer adults. Income, education and having a private health insurance plan are the factors that contributed most to the observed inequality.

Discussion: The decomposition showed that there are avoidable inequalities in relation to socioeconomic status for older adults in Brazil. These factors can guide the formulation of social and health policies aimed at reducing health inequalities.

Keywords: Concentration index; Older adults; Self-rated health; Socioeconomic inequalities.