Self-reported health and the social body
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Self‑reported health and the social body Mirza Balaj1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Since the strong predictive power of self-reported health (SRH) for prospective health and social outcomes has been established, researchers have been in a quest to build a theoretical understanding of this widely used health measure. Current literature based predominantly in a biomedical perspective asserts a linear relationship between physical conditions and perception of health. Discrepancies from this expected relationship are considered an important weakness of SRH. Systematic discrepancies between physical conditions and reporting of SRH have been documented across different socio-economic groups. Evidence identified for educational groups shows that for the same level of health status, lower-educated groups report poorer levels of perceived health. This raised doubts whether it is useful to use SRH to measure social inequalities in health within and between countries. To date, sociologists of health have not engaged in the discussion of reporting heterogeneity in SRH. After reviewing existing evidence, we contend that the discrepancy in SRH reporting across social groups argued to be a weakness of SRH as a health measure is a strength from a sociological perspective. SRH as a social measure of health is a better predictor than objective measures of health precisely because it captures the lived experience of the embodied agent. Keywords Self-reported health · Reporting heterogeneity · Bourdieu · Capital interaction theory · Health inequalities
Introduction Among health measures, self-reported health (SRH) has gained prominence in the last three decades in population health research. Studies have shown the ability of SRH to reflect individuals` view of their past health, their assessment of current health and to predict future health status. Indeed, there is ample evidence that * Mirza Balaj [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology and Political Science Dragvoll, Building 10, Level 4, 7491 Trondheim, Norway Vol.:(0123456789)
M. Balaj
beyond mortality (Idler and Benyamini 1997; DeSalvo et al. 2006; Bopp et al. 2012) SRH predicts new morbidity (Ferraro et al. 1997), decline in functional ability (Idler and Kasl 1991), recovery from illness (Wilcox et al. 1996) and health care utilization (Menec and Chipperfield 2001). This evidence raises a quintessential question: What makes self-evaluation of health a stronger predictor of future morbidity and mortality than clinical markers of disease and disability (Picard et al. 2013)? There is an unequivocal consensus across research traditions that SRH is a complex multidimensional phenomenon that represents more than just objective health (Idler et al. 1999; Simon et al. 2005). In essence, several studies have shown that overall health reflects the distribution of resources in society (Wilkinson and Marmot 2003; Phelan et al. 2010). However, as Jylhä (2009) states hardly any measure has been more widely used and more poorly understood than SRH. Therefore, it remains to
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