Sharon M. Holder

Health, Ethnicity and Ageing: the Role of Socio-economic Status: an Analysis of the Different Socio-economic Status Measures in Assessing Health Among Ethnic Elders in Britain Sharon M. Holder

There has been a dearth of research focusing on the ethnic diversity of the older population and the implications for health and health care needs. In fact, ?ageing? and ?ethnicity? are rarely integrated within health research. This book contributes to our understanding of health, socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and ageing. It explores the ?sensitivity? of different measures and their appropriateness and validity in assessing health status amongst ethnic minority groups in Britain in order to better understand health inequalities in later life. Using cross-sectional data from a nationally representative sample, different logistic regression models are run for the outcome variables general health and limiting long-standing illness in order to determine the ?sensitivity? of SES of the different measures of health among the different ethnic minority groups. The findings suggest that there are distinct patterns in reporting general health and limiting long-standing illness amongst and between ethnic minority groups based on the SES measures employed. The limitations of the study, the policy implications of the findings and areas for future research are discussed.