- Title
- Geographical variations in self-rated health and functional limitations among older Chinese in eight WHO-SAGE provinces
- Creator
- Yiengprugsawan, Vasoontara; D'Este, Catherine; Byles, Julie; Kendig, Hal
- Relation
- BMC Geriatrics Vol. 19, Issue 1, no. 10
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-018-1005-y
- Publisher
- BioMed Central (BMC)
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Background: The proportion of population ageing in China will grow significantly in the next few decades but the pace of population ageing and social change vary considerably across regions. Notably, Eastern coastal areas are economically more advanced compared to the Western region. These economic disparities could result in differing adverse health outcomes. Methods: We investigate geographical variations in self-rated overall health and functional limitations in a national representative sample of Chinese aged 50 years and older (n = 13,175) using the WHO Study on global AGEing and adult health (WHO SAGE). We used multivariable logistic regression to investigate urban-rural inequalities across regions, adjusting for sociodemographic and health covariates. Two main outcomes were self-rated overall health and functional limitations based on the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 for a range of daily activities. Results: The largest urban-rural differences in adverse health outcomes were in Shandong (AORs for urban versus rural of 6.32 [95% Confidence Interval 4.53–8.82] for poor or very poor self-rated overall health and 5.14 [CI 3.55–7.44] for functional limitations), followed by Jilin (AORs 2.71 [CI 2.04–3.61] and 4.72 [CI 3.43–6.49]), and Hubei (AORs 2.36 [CI 1.82–3.07] and 4.11 [CI 2.80–6.04]), respectively. Covariates significantly associated with both adverse health outcomes were older age, poor income, no health insurance, and increasing number of chronic diseases. Conclusion: Our study reveals substantial disparities between urban and rural areas observed in both the welldeveloped areas (eg Shandong) and also the lower end of the economic spectrum (eg Hubei and Jilin). Targeted economic development policy and systematic health prevention and healthcare policies could be beneficial in improving health in later life whilst minimising geographical inequalities.
- Subject
- ageing population; China; functional limitations; health disparities; self-rated health; urban-rural inequalities; SDG 1; SDG 8; SDG 10; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1454825
- Identifier
- uon:45001
- Identifier
- ISSN:1471-2318
- Rights
- This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Hits: 1513
- Visitors: 1586
- Downloads: 108
Collections
Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Goal 1: No Poverty
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Publisher version (open access) | 769 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |