• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.70-83
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between socio-economic factors and self-rated health among older people living in the community. In addition, the study tries to determine whether risk differentials by these socio-economic factors can be explained by other demographic factors, chronic diseases, and functional status. We surveyed to investigate the self-rated health of 397 study samples which had been selected by stratified randomized sampling, $2.7\%$ by each Dong (district) of S-city in Gyeonggi-do. Our study found that the socioeconomic factors such as income, occupation, and insurance were significantly associated with self-rated health. The level of social economic status was positively associated with the level of self-rated health. Two-staged multivariate analysis demonstrated that this relationship was still significant even after adjustment for demographic factors, chronic diseases, and functional status. In conclusion, there are wide socio-economic disparities in self-rated health of older people in this community. It is important that government should know not only health status but also the health-associated factors in order to prepare for the aged society and improve the health status of the elderly. Further researches should uncover causality and mechanism by which SES affects changes in functional health among the elderly.