IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0193165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Welfare states, the Great Recession and health: Trends in educational inequalities in self-reported health in 26 European countries

Author

Listed:
  • Teresa Leão
  • Inês Campos-Matos
  • Clare Bambra
  • Giuliano Russo
  • Julian Perelman

Abstract

Background: Although socioeconomic inequalities in health have long been observed in Europe, few studies have analysed their recent patterning. In this paper, we examined how educational inequalities in self-reported health have evolved in different European countries and welfare state regimes over the last decade, which was troubled by the Great Recession. Methods: We used cross-sectional data from the EU-SILC survey for adults from 26 European countries, from 2005 to 2014 (n = 3,030,595). We first calculated education-related absolute (SII) and relative (RII) inequalities in poor self-reported health by country-year, adjusting for age, sex, and EU-SILC survey weights. We then regressed the year- and country-specific RII and SII on a yearly time trend, globally and by welfare regime, adjusting for country fixed effects. We further adjusted the analysis for the economic cycle using GDP growth, unemployment, and income inequality. Results: Overall, absolute inequalities persisted and relative inequalities slightly widened (betaRII = 0.0313, p

Suggested Citation

  • Teresa Leão & Inês Campos-Matos & Clare Bambra & Giuliano Russo & Julian Perelman, 2018. "Welfare states, the Great Recession and health: Trends in educational inequalities in self-reported health in 26 European countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-14, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0193165
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193165
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193165&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0193165?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Drydakis, Nick, 2015. "The effect of unemployment on self-reported health and mental health in Greece from 2008 to 2013: A longitudinal study before and during the financial crisis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 43-51.
    2. Mackenbach, Johan P. & Kunst, Anton E., 1997. "Measuring the magnitude of socio-economic inequalities in health: An overview of available measures illustrated with two examples from Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 757-771, March.
    3. Eikemo, Terje Andreas & Bambra, Clare & Judge, Ken & Ringdal, Kristen, 2008. "Welfare state regimes and differences in self-perceived health in Europe: A multilevel analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(11), pages 2281-2295, June.
    4. Campos-Matos, Inês & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2015. "Social mobility and health in European countries: Does welfare regime type matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 241-248.
    5. Mark Visser & Maurice Gesthuizen & Peer Scheepers, 2014. "The Impact of Macro-Economic Circumstances and Social Protection Expenditure on Economic Deprivation in 25 European Countries, 2007–2011," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(3), pages 1179-1203, February.
    6. Reeves, Aaron & McKee, Martin & Basu, Sanjay & Stuckler, David, 2014. "The political economy of austerity and healthcare: Cross-national analysis of expenditure changes in 27 European nations 1995–2011," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-8.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10510 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Rianne Gelder & Gwenn Menvielle & Giuseppe Costa & Katalin Kovács & Pekka Martikainen & Bjørn Heine Strand & Johan P. Mackenbach, 2017. "Long-term trends of inequalities in mortality in 6 European countries," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 62(1), pages 127-141, January.
    9. O'Campo, Patricia & Molnar, Agnes & Ng, Edwin & Renahy, Emilie & Mitchell, Christiane & Shankardass, Ketan & St. John, Alexander & Bambra, Clare & Muntaner, Carles, 2015. "Social welfare matters: A realist review of when, how, and why unemployment insurance impacts poverty and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 88-94.
    10. Mackenbach, Johan P., 2012. "The persistence of health inequalities in modern welfare states: The explanation of a paradox," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(4), pages 761-769.
    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. Aviad Tur-Sinai & Amira Paz & Israel Doron, 2022. "Self-Rated Health and Socioeconomic Status in Old Age: The Role of Gender and the Moderating Effect of Time and Welfare Regime in Europe," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-17, April.

    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. Chiara Scaratti & Matilde Leonardi & Fabiola Silvaggi & Carolina C. Ávila & Amalia Muñoz-Murillo & Panayiota Stavroussi & Olga Roka & Helena Burger & Klemens Fheodoroff & Beata Tobiasz-Adamczyk & Carl, 2018. "Mapping European Welfare Models: State of the Art of Strategies for Professional Integration and Reintegration of Persons with Chronic Diseases," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Jeong, Soyun & Fox, Ashley M., 2023. "Enhanced unemployment benefits, mental health, and substance use among low-income households during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    3. Olga Grigoriev & Gabriele Doblhammer, 2019. "Changing educational gradient in long-term care-free life expectancy among German men, 1997-2012," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-20, September.
    4. Alexi Gugushvili & Martin McKee & Michael Murphy & Aytalina Azarova & Darja Irdam & Katarzyna Doniec & Lawrence King, 2019. "Intergenerational Mobility in Relative Educational Attainment and Health-Related Behaviours," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 413-441, January.
    5. Daniel Falkstedt & Kimmo Sorjonen & Tomas Hemmingsson & Ian J Deary & Bo Melin, 2013. "Psychosocial Functioning and Intelligence Both Partly Explain Socioeconomic Inequalities in Premature Death. A Population-Based Male Cohort Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-8, December.
    6. Thompson, Kristina & Ophem, Johan van & Wagemakers, Annemarie, 2019. "Studying the impact of the Eurozone’s Great Recession on health: Methodological choices and challenges," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 162-184.
    7. Patricia Gómez-Costilla & Carmen García-Prieto & Noelia Somarriba-Arechavala, 2022. "Aging and Gender Health Gap: A Multilevel Analysis for 17 European Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 1051-1069, April.
    8. Jutz, Regina, 2020. "Health inequalities in Eastern Europe. Does the role of the welfare regime differ from Western Europe?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    9. Álvarez-Gálvez, Javier & Jaime-Castillo, Antonio M., 2018. "The impact of social expenditure on health inequalities in Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 9-18.
    10. Simpson, Julija & Albani, Viviana & Bell, Zoe & Bambra, Clare & Brown, Heather, 2021. "Effects of social security policy reforms on mental health and inequalities: A systematic review of observational studies in high-income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    11. Guimarães, Joanna M.N. & Clarke, Philippa & Tate, Denise & Coeli, Claudia Medina & Griep, Rosane Harter & Fonseca, Maria de Jesus Mendes da & Santos, Itamar S. & Melo, Enirtes Caetano Prates & Chor, D, 2016. "Social mobility and subclinical atherosclerosis in a middle-income country: Association of intra- and inter-generational social mobility with carotid intima-media thickness in the Brazilian Longitudin," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 9-17.
    12. Pieter Dudal & Piet Bracke, 2016. "Absolute and relative educational inequalities in depression in Europe," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 61(7), pages 787-795, September.
    13. María Andrée López Gómez & Laura Serra & George L Delclos & Fernando G Benavides, 2017. "Employment history indicators and mortality in a nested case-control study from the Spanish WORKing life social security (WORKss) cohort," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-15, June.
    14. Campos-Matos, Inês & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2015. "Social mobility and health in European countries: Does welfare regime type matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 241-248.
    15. Green, Judith & Buckner, Stefanie & Milton, Sarah & Powell, Katie & Salway, Sarah & Moffatt, Suzanne, 2017. "A model of how targeted and universal welfare entitlements impact on material, psycho-social and structural determinants of health in older adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 20-28.
    16. Sara Pinillos-Franco & Noelia Somarriba-Arechavala, 2019. "A Proposal for a Synthetic Health Indicator in the European Union: an Analysis of Gender Health Inequalities," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(4), pages 1019-1033, September.
    17. Gugushvili, Alexi & Zhao, Yizhang & Bukodi, Erzsébet, 2019. "‘Falling from grace’ and ‘rising from rags’: Intergenerational educational mobility and depressive symptoms," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 294-304.
    18. Gintare Mazeikaite & Cathal O’Donoghue & Denisa M. Sologon, 2021. "What Drives Cross-Country Health Inequality in the EU? Unpacking the Role of Socio-economic Factors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 117-155, May.
    19. MAZEIKAITE Gintare & O'DONOGHUE Cathal & SOLOGON Denisa, 2017. "Decomposing health inequality in the EU," LISER Working Paper Series 2017-02, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    20. Hajizadeh, Mohammad & Mitnitski, Arnold & Rockwood, Kenneth, 2016. "Socioeconomic gradient in health in Canada: Is the gap widening or narrowing?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(9), pages 1040-1050.

    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:plo:pone00:0193165. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.