IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v24y1998i1p1-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Poverty Status, Health Behaviours, and Health: Implications for Social Assistance and Health Care Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Deanna L. Williamson
  • Janet E. Fast

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among poverty status, health behaviours, and the health of 130 Albertans living in poor families. For the purposes of this study, poverty status indicated whether poor families were receiving social assistance along with comprehensive health care benefits or whether they were working poor without comprehensive health care benefits. Findings from seven separate path analyses indicate that poverty status was differentially related to the health of participants. Specifically, working poor respondents were found to be generally healthier than their social assistance counterparts except in those instances in which the working poor were prevented from filling needed prescriptions because they lacked the economic resources to do so. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for social assistance and health care policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Deanna L. Williamson & Janet E. Fast, 1998. "Poverty Status, Health Behaviours, and Health: Implications for Social Assistance and Health Care Policy," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 24(1), pages 1-25, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:24:y:1998:i:1:p:1-25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0317-0861%28199803%2924%3A1%3C1%3APSHBAH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2
    Download Restriction: only available to JSTOR subscribers
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Idler, E.L. & Angel, R.J., 1990. "Self-rated health and mortality in the NHANES-I epidemiologic follow-up study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 80(4), pages 446-452.
    2. Segovia, Jorge & Bartlett, Roy F. & Edwards, Alison C., 1989. "An empirical analysis of the dimensions of health status measures," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 761-768, January.
    3. Hay, David Ian, 1988. "Socioeconomic status and health status: A study of males in the Canada health survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 27(12), pages 1317-1325, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lori Curtis & Shelley Phipps, 2001. "Social Transfers and the Health Status and Health-Care Utilization of Mothers in Norway and Canada," LIS Working papers 313, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Buckley, Neil J. & Denton, Frank T. & Leslie Robb, A. & Spencer, Byron G., 2004. "The transition from good to poor health: an econometric study of the older population," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 1013-1034, September.
    3. Rhonda Kornberger & Janet E. Fast & Deanna L. Williamson, 2001. "Welfare or Work: Which is Better for Canadian Children?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 27(4), pages 407-421, December.
    4. Williamson, Deanna L. & Stewart, Miriam J. & Hayward, Karen & Letourneau, Nicole & Makwarimba, Edward & Masuda, Jeff & Raine, Kim & Reutter, Linda & Rootman, Irving & Wilson, Douglas, 2006. "Low-income Canadians' experiences with health-related services: Implications for health care reform," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 106-121, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Veenstra, Gerry & Vanzella-Yang, Adam, 2022. "Interactions between parental and personal socioeconomic resources and self-rated health: Adjudicating between the resource substitution and resource multiplication theories," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    2. Hongliang Wang & Yiwen Yu, 2016. "Increasing health inequality in China: An empirical study with ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(1), pages 41-61, March.
    3. Hanna Solinge & Kène Henkens, 2018. "Subjective life expectancy and actual mortality: results of a 10-year panel study among older workers," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 155-164, June.
    4. Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey, 2011. "Do body weight and gender shape the work force? The case of Iceland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 148-156, March.
    5. Alan C Tsai & Pei‐Yu Ku & Jeng‐Dau Tsai, 2010. "Population‐specific Mini Nutritional Assessment can improve mortality‐risk‐predicting ability in institutionalised older Taiwanese," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(17‐18), pages 2493-2499, September.
    6. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Giorgia Marini, 2023. "Good health with good institutions. An empirical analysis for italian regions," Public Finance Research Papers 61, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    7. Artazcoz, Lucia & Cortès, Imma & Borrell, Carme & Escribà-Agüir, Vicenta & Cascant, Lorena, 2011. "Social inequalities in the association between partner/marital status and health among workers in Spain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(4), pages 600-607, February.
    8. Hania Wu & Tony Tam, 2015. "Economic Development and Socioeconomic Inequality of Well-Being: A Cross-Sectional Time-Series Analysis of Urban China, 2003–2011," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 124(2), pages 401-425, November.
    9. Amy Y. Zhang & Lucy C. Yu & Jianping Yuan & Zhifu Tong & Chaoyuan Yang & Stephen E. Foreman, 1997. "Family and Cultural Correlates of Depression Among Chinese Elderly," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 43(3), pages 199-212, September.
    10. Ljunge, Martin, 2016. "Migrants, health, and happiness: Evidence that health assessments travel with migrants and predict well-being," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 35-46.
    11. Jason Fletcher & Katie M. Jajtner, 2021. "Intergenerational health mobility: Magnitudes and Importance of Schools and Place," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1648-1667, July.
    12. McFadden, E. & Luben, R. & Bingham, S. & Wareham, N. & Kinmonth, A.-L. & Khaw, K.-T., 2009. "Does the association between self-rated health and mortality vary by social class?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 275-280, January.
    13. H. Eme Ichoku & William Fonta & Michael Thiede, 2011. "Socioeconomic gradients in self-rated health: a developing country case study of Enugu State, Nigeria," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 179-202, August.
    14. Lawrence Hazelrigg & Melissa Hardy, 2000. "Scaling the Semantics of Satisfaction," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 147-180, February.
    15. Shirmin Bintay Kader & Md Sabbir Ahmed & Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk & Xavier Leloup & Laurence Simard & Catherine Leviten-Reid & Nazeem Muhajarine, 2024. "Rental Housing Type and Self-Reported General Health and Mental Health Status: Evidence from the Canadian Housing Survey 2018–2019," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(9), pages 1-19, September.
    16. Johnston, David W. & Propper, Carol & Shields, Michael A., 2009. "Comparing subjective and objective measures of health: Evidence from hypertension for the income/health gradient," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 540-552, May.
    17. Rubin, Sara & Zimmer, Zachary, 2015. "Pain and self-assessed health: Does the association vary by age?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 259-267.
    18. Albertini, Julien & Fairise, Xavier & Terriau, Anthony, 2021. "Health, wealth, and informality over the life cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    19. Chen, Linkun & Clarke, Philip M. & Petrie, Dennis J. & Staub, Kevin E., 2021. "The effects of self-assessed health: Dealing with and understanding misclassification bias," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    20. Ali, Sadiq M. & Merlo, Juan & Rosvall, Maria & Lithman, Thor & Lindström, Martin, 2006. "Social capital, the miniaturisation of community, traditionalism and first time acute myocardial infarction: A prospective cohort study in southern Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(8), pages 2204-2217, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:24:y:1998:i:1:p:1-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Iver Chong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.