ArticleBMC public health2008
Monitoring trends in socioeconomic health inequalities: it matters how you measure.
Article in BMC public health, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic comparison of household income, consumption, and assets to measure health inequalities in low- and middle-income countries.Scientific reports · 2024Pooled it
- Generalizability of anti-SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence estimates to the Montréal pediatric population: a comparison between 2 weighting methods.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Socioeconomic Inequalities in Intention to Quit Smoking Plan Among Korean Adults, 2016-2021.Tobacco use insights · 2025Article
- Long-term inequalities in health among older Mexican adults: An outcome-wide analysis.SSM - population health · 2024Article
- An evolution of socioeconomic inequalities in self-rated health in Korea: Evidence from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 1998-2018.SSM - population health · 2024Article
- Intrinsic capacity trajectories and socioeconomic inequalities in health: the contributions of wealth, education, gender, and ethnicity.International journal for equity in health · 2024Article
- Self-Reported Health as Predictor of Allostatic Load and All-Cause Mortality: Findings From the Lolland-Falster Health Study.International journal of public health · 2024Article
- Are relative educational inequalities in multiple health behaviors widening? A longitudinal study of middle-aged adults in Northern Norway.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Comparison of health inequalities according to socioeconomic status: findings from the fourth Korean working condition survey (a cross-sectional study).The Pan African medical journal · 2023Article
- Trends and Changes in Socio-Economic Inequality in Self-Rated Health among Migrants and Non-Migrants: Repeated Cross-Sectional Analysis of National Survey Data in Germany, 1995-2017.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Analysis of the impact of social determinants and primary care morbidity on population health outcomes by combining big data: A research protocol.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Investigating change across time in prevalence or association: the challenges of cross-study comparative research and possible solutions.Discover social science and health · 2022Article
- Educational inequalities, urbanicity and levels of non-communicable diseases risk factors: evaluating trends in Argentina (2005-2013).BMC public health · 2021Article
- Article
- Trends in the Social Class Inequalities in Disability and Self-Rated Health: Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys from Finland and Sweden 2001-2018.International journal of public health · 2021Article
- Socioeconomic inequalities in women's access to health care: has Ecuadorian health reform been successful?International journal for equity in health · 2020Article
- Change in the Prevalence and Social Patterning of First-and Second-Hand Smoking in PORTUGAL: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study (2005 and 2014).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Article
- The nutrition transition in Mexico 1988-2016: the role of wealth in the social patterning of obesity by education.Public health nutrition · 2018Article
- Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOdds ratio (OR), a relative measure for health inequality, has frequently been used in prior studies for presenting inequality trends in health and health behaviors. Since OR is not a good approximation of prevalence ratio (PR) when the outcome prevalence is quite high, an important problem may arise when OR trends are used in data in which the outcome variable (e.g., smoking or ill-health) is of relatively high prevalence and varies significantly over time. This study is to compare time trends of odds ratio (OR) and prevalence ratio (PR) for examining time trends in socioeconomic inequality in smoking.
methodsA total of 147,805 subjects (71,793 men and 76,017 women) aged 25-64 from three Social Statistics Surveys of Korea from 1999 to 2006 were analyzed. Socioeconomic position indicators were occupational class and education.
resultsWhile there were no significant p values for trend in ORs of occupational class among men, trends for PRs were significant. In women, p values for OR trends were similar to those for PR trends. In males, RII by log-binomial regression showed a significant increasing tendency while RII by logistic regression was stable between years. In females, trends of RIIs by logistic regression and log-binomial regression produced a similar level of p values.
conclusionDifferent methods of measuring trends in socioeconomic health inequalities may lead to different conclusions about whether relative inequalities are increasing or decreasing. Trends in ORs may overstate or understate trends in relative inequality in health when the outcome is of relatively high prevalence and that prevalence varies significantly with time.
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