© 2007 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.092320
Amanda Sacker and Mel Bartley are with the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, England. Richard D. Wiggins is with the Department of Sociology, City University, London. Peggy McDonough is with the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Amanda Sacker, PhD, Dept of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 119 Torrington Pl, London, WC1E 6BT, UK (e-mail: a.sacker{at}ucl.ac.uk).
Objectives. We reviewed literature on comparative social policy and life course research and compared associations between health and socioeconomic circumstances during an 11-year period in the United States and the United Kingdom. Methods. We obtained data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the British Household Panel Survey (19902002). We used latent transition analysis to examine change in self-rated health from one discrete state to another; these health trajectories were then associated with socioeconomic measures at the beginning and at the end of the study period. Results. We identified good and poor latent health states, which remained relatively stable over time. When change occurred, decline rather than improvement was more likely. UK populations were in better health compared with US populations and were more likely to improve over time. Labor market participation was more strongly associated with good health in the United Kingdom than in the United States. Conclusions. National policies and practices may be keeping more US workers than UK workers who are in poor health employed, but British policies may give UK workers the chance to return to better health and to the labor force.
The cause of poorer health of the US population compared with that of other developed nations has been much debated in recent years.13 Some suggest that differences in population health stem from restricted access to resources at the individual level and public underinvestment in the human, physical, and social fabric of society within countries, including health and welfare policies.4 The more generous, comprehensive, and universal state programs of social democratic welfare governments have already been compared with the more financially limited and less accessible programs in the United States.57 Yet, despite these insights, at least 2 significant issues remain relatively unexplored in comparative research on socioeconomic inequalities in health. First, most comparative work on health differences has focused on aggregate measures of inequality.811 However, if we are to better understand how policies contribute to, maintain, and reduce social inequalities in health, we need between-country comparisons of health and inequality at the individual level. A second issue is that most comparative research relies on cross-sectional data1214 despite widespread acknowledgment that socioeconomic conditions and health have a complex time-dependent relationship15 and analysis of this relationship requires longitudinal repeated-measures data. For example, recent research on individual health change or trajectories shows that health patterns are more variable than previously thought. On average, physical health and function may decline with age,16 but there is considerable individual variation in this overall pattern.1720 This suggests that the population health disadvantage in the United States at one point in time may tell us very little about national differences in health across individuals life courses. Because health has stable and dynamic components, we investigated patterns of population health over time within a given country and differences in these patterns between countries. This approach also allowed us to make stronger statements about the social causes and consequences of different health patterns. We compared health trajectories and their associations with socioeconomic variables in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1990s. The United Kingdom is an interesting comparator because, like the United States, it is considered to be a liberal welfare state,21,22 although some of its policies are more closely shared with European social democratic welfare states. Recent UK welfare reforms resemble the means-testing and welfare-to-work programs that now dominate the US social assistance agenda, but the provision of universal health care and child benefits in the United Kingdom are just 2 examples of important differences in agendas.23 Furthermore, although poverty rates in the United Kingdom and the United States were higher throughout the 1990s compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average, the United Kingdom ranked squarely alongside other European countries in lifting those at risk out of relative income poverty via tax and benefits systems.24,25 During the 1990s, however, there was convergence between US and UK welfare reforms.15 Although we did not test specific hypotheses associated with this development, the reform period provides the context within which we interpreted population health patterns in the 2 countries and some possible causes for these patterns. When comparing health trajectories, we asked 2 questions: what are patterns of individual health change in the United States and the United Kingdom, and how are these patterns associated with antecedent and subsequent socioeconomic circumstances? We used data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to investigate individual health patterns with a latent transition model.26 This approach built upon earlier work in which we modeled individual growth curves as a continuous function of self-rated health over time.27,28 However, health trajectories may be better represented as movement between discrete stages that involve not only stable periods or unidirectional change but also intermittent deterioration or improvement. We asked whether and how health changes during an 8-year period, and whether the reciprocal association between health trajectories and socioeconomic circumstances over time can inform us about the processes that underlie cross-sectional national differences in health.
Data The data for our study were from the 1990 to 2001 waves of the PSID and the 1991 to 2002 waves of the BHPS, which are ongoing studies of representative samples of adults and children living in families in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively.29,30 The PSID began with a national sample of nearly 5000 households in 1968. Individuals were interviewed annually until 1997 and biannually thereafter. The PSID sample (n = 4042) comprised household heads and their partners who responded to the self-reported health question, were aged 25 to 55 years in 1991, and who had complete covariate data in 1990. The BHPS was initiated in 1991 and is an annual survey of approximately 5500 private households composed of approximately 9000 individuals aged 16 years and older. The BHPS sample (n = 4116) comprised household members aged 25 to 55 years in 1992 who had self-reported health data that year and complete covariate data in 1991.
Measures
Table 1
Socioeconomic variables were measured in 1990 and 2000 for the PSID and in 1991 and 2001 for the BHPS. Respondents were classified as employed, unemployed, or economically inactive. The economically inactive included those who were not employed because they were early retirees, permanently or temporarily disabled, involved in family care or keeping house, students, involved in workfare or government training schemes, in prison, or involved in other nonwork activities (such as unpaid charity work). Low income was defined as being in the bottom 20% of adjusted household income. Adjusted incomes were derived by dividing household income by the square root of household size.31 We used routine or semiroutine occupation as a dummy variable. Employees in routine and semiroutine occupations are regulated by short-term labor contracts, exchanging wages for labor in highly supervised conditions with little or no need for employee discretion. For the UK data, this variable was defined by the Office of National Statistics classification of an individuals current or most recent occupation.32 For the US data, it was identified by a 3-digit occupation code from the Census of Population Alphabetical Index of Industries and Occupation.33 Self-reports of specific health problems were asked of respondents in both surveys (in 2001 for the PSID and 2002 for the BHPS), which enabled us to validate our latent class analysis of self-rated health. The following conditions were recorded in both surveys: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, and self-reported emotional problems.
Analysis LTA requires a number of discrete steps. First, an optimal number of latent classes, or unobserved categories of health status, must be identified such that, in any year, respondents within the same latent class are homogeneous with respect to their observed responses to self-rated health, and respondents in different latent classes have dissimilar responses. The latent class model takes measurement error into account by allowing latent states to diverge from what is imposed by the common practice of dichotomizing observed responses into good and poor health. In addition to employment status, low income, and occupation, the latent health states were regressed on work-limiting illness, age in years, gender, race/ethnicity (White or non-White), education (completed by age 16 years and completed after age 16 years), and qualifications (no undergraduate degree or equivalent or undergraduate degree level or higher), all of which were measured in 1990 (PSID) or 1991 (BHPS). Second, the discriminant validity of the latent states must be verified. We used data from 2001 (PSID) and 2002 (BHPS) in a confirmatory analysis to estimate prevalence rates of the selected health problems in each latent health class.34 Third, the stability of and change in the unobserved latent health states must be charted. Initial health state probabilities at time t0 were regressed on the set of background variables, similar to step 1. In the LTA, change was modeled as the probability of a transition from one health state to another at time tn, a probability that depended on the health state at tn1. This LTA model is known also as a hidden first-order Markov model; the sequence of transitions or movement between health states over time is an individuals trajectory.35 The transition probabilities at time tn did not depend on health state at tn2 and were the same for all tn. A model that allowed the transition probabilities to be influenced by the background variables produced unstable estimates. Fourth, transition patterns must be summarized. The LTA estimates the probability of an individual being in n health states on 5 occasions, which provides n5 possible patterns for describing health transitions; we summarized these patterns into a smaller number of discrete trajectories. The probability of an individual having a particular health trajectory is the sum of the probabilities of belonging to the transition patterns that make up that trajectory. Fifth, socioeconomic differences in transition patterns must be estimated. To examine the reciprocal influences of health and socioeconomic circumstances over time, we estimated trajectory-specific prevalence rates of the socioeconomic variables twice: 1 year before the assessment of the health trajectories (1990 in the PSID and 1991 in the BHPS), and 2 years after the end of the health trajectories (2001 in the PSID and 2002 in the BHPS). The precision of the estimates uses individual probabilities of having each health trajectory established in the previous step. (More details about the LTA are available as a supplement to the online version of this article.) All analyses were conducted with Mplus v4 software,36 which applies robust maximum likelihood estimation with the assumption that missing data are missing at random.37 This made full use of data from individuals who did not respond to all questions, who dropped out of the survey, or were not interviewed in 1 or more waves of the survey. Inverse probability weights accounted for differential sampling in the 2 surveys, and standard errors were adjusted for the clustered sample design.
Identifying and Validating the Number of Underlying or Latent Classes The first step identified 2 latent health states underlying the observed responses to the self-rated health question: a good health state and a poor health state. There were considerable cross-national similarities in the distribution of response categories for the 2 health states (data not shown). Those who were in underlying good health also had a very high probability (P > 0.94) of endorsing the top 2 categories of the 5-point self-rated health questionnaire item. Those who were in poor health were more variable in their responses, and most reported the middle category.
Table 1 The health status of those who were in a good health state or a poor health state was confirmed during the validation step (data not shown). Despite some reporting differences between the United States and the United Kingdom, few individuals who were in a good latent health state in either country reported any health problems. Less than 10% of those who were in a good latent health state reported any health problem in either survey, whereas with the less healthy, more than 74% reported 1 or more health problems.
Charting Stability and Change in Latent Health States
Summarizing Transition Patterns
Estimating Socioeconomic Differences in Transition Patterns Table 3
We next compared between-country associations between health trajectories and socioeconomic position. It is important to note the higher levels of nonemployment in the United Kingdom compared with the United States, regardless of health or occasion, although the magnitude of this difference declined considerably over time because labor force participation increased among all health groups in the UK population, with the exception of those in the declining health group. As already noted, there were many similarities in the socioeconomic profiles of the health trajectory groups between the 2 countries both at baseline and at the end of the study, but differences also were evident. Notably, improved health in the United Kingdom was associated with significant increases in economic activity, but this was not the case in the United States. However, improved health was associated with increases in income in the United States, a change over time that was not observed for the stable poor health group. Thus, we found significantly higher rates of economic inactivity among those who were in poor health in the United Kingdom compared with in the United States, but this was combined with a significant return to the UK labor market among those whose health improved over time.
Crossnational Comparisons Our study is the first to compare the health trajectories of individuals in the United States with those of individuals in the United Kingdom and to examine the role of socioeconomic circumstances in these patterns. As such, we have made 3 contributions to comparative research on health and social inequalities. First, we suggest that, although there may be an overall health advantage in the United Kingdom, the distribution of latent health states and change in health states over time were quite similar in the 2 countries. Four main trajectories placed the vast majority of the 2 populations in stable health states (good or poor) during the 8-year period, and the minority was in the declining or improved groups. The health of the US population was no more likely to deteriorate than the health of the UK population, but the latter population had a higher likelihood for improvement.
Health and Socioeconomic Circumstances Among all between-country differences in process, the socioeconomic characteristic that stood out was employment status. Nonemployment was higher in the United Kingdom compared with the United States throughout the study period, an observation that may partly be understood by macroeconomic conditions and social policies. For example, the unemployment rate was, on average, 2.4% higher in the United Kingdom compared with the United States on an annual basis during the study period.38 When faced with poor employment prospects, applying for disability benefits may have become more attractive to unemployed individuals who had health problems, especially those who had few competitive skills.39,40 Another factor is access to health care. The universal health insurance system in the United Kingdom contrasts sharply with the largely private system in the United States, which ties insurance benefits (when they exist) to employment. Because of this constraint, individuals in the United States may be forced to continue working to ensure access to medical care, regardless of their health. Although these explanations are plausible for cross-sectional national differences in employment status and health, they do not necessarily account for differences in change: during the study period, nonemployment fell in the United Kingdom (except among the declining health group), and it rose in the United States. Moreover, improved health was associated with improved chances for employment in the United Kingdom but not in the United States. Although the US pattern is consistent with the aging of this population cohort and their associated withdrawal from the labor force, the results for the United Kingdom are more puzzling. They may be associated with the sharper drop in unemployment in the United Kingdom (from 7.5% to 5.8%) compared with the United States (from 5.5% to 4.8%) during the study period.38 More satisfying explanations may emerge from further research; nevertheless, our findings suggest that individual factors and structural factors interact in complex ways.
Measurement Equivalent
Conclusions
This study was funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant PPR79227). A. Sacker also was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant G0100222) and the Economic and Social Research Council (grant L326253061). M. Bartley was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant RES000230588). Data from the British Household Panel Survey were supplied by the Economic and Social Research Council data archive. Note. Those who carried out the original collection and analysis of the data bear no responsibility for its further analysis and interpretation.
Human Participants Protection
Peer Reviewed
Contributors Accepted for publication May 21, 2006.
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