@article{Charonis2017-cm,

title = {Subjective social status, social network and health disparities: 

 empirical evidence from Greece},

author = {Antonios Charonis and Ilias-Ioannis Kyriopoulos and Manos Spanakis and Dimitris Zavras and Kostas Athanasakis and Elpida Pavi and John Kyriopoulos},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-02-01},

journal = {Int J Equity Health},

volume = {16},

number = {1},

pages = {40},

abstract = {BACKGROUND: Several studies suggest that socioeconomic status 

 affects (SES) affects self-rated health (SRH), both in Greece and 

 internationally. However, prior research mainly uses objective 

 measures of SES, instead of subjective evaluations of 

 individuals' social status. Based on this, this paper aims to 

 examine (a) the impact of the economic dowturn on SRH in Greece 

 and (b) the relationship between subjective social status (SSS), 

 social network and SRH. METHODS: The descriptive analysis is 

 based on four cross-sectional surveys conducted by the National 

 School of Public Health, Athens, Greece (2002, 2006, 2011, 2015), 

 while the data for the empirical investigation were derived from 

 the 2015 survey (Health + Welfare Survey GR). The empirical 

 strategy is based on an ordinal logistic regression model, aiming 

 to examine how several variables affect SRH. Size of social 

 network and SSS are among the independent variables employed for 

 the empirical analysis RESULTS: According to our findings, 

 average SRH has deteriorated, and the percentage of the 

 population that reports very good/good SRH has also decreased. 

 Moreover, our empirical analysis suggests that age, existence of 

 a chronic disease, size of social network and SSS affect SRH in 

 Greece. CONCLUSION: Our findings are consistent with the existing 

 literature and confirm a social gradient in health. According to 

 our analysis, health disparities can be largely attributed to 

 socioeconomic inequalities. The adverse economic climate has 

 impact on socioeconomic differences which in turn affect health 

 disparities. Based on these, policy initiatives are necessasy in 

 order to mitigate the negative impact on health and the 

 disparities caused by economic dowturn and the occuring 

 socioeconomic inequalities.},

keywords = {Greece; Ordinal logistic regression; Self-rated health; Social   network; Socioeconomic status; Subjective social status},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}