© 2004 by European Journal of Public Health
Health of young people and families |
Parental economic stress
Evidence of an overlooked public health risk among Swedish families
Gunilla Olivius1, Per-Olof Östergren1,*, Bertil S. Hanson
,1 and
C.H. Lyttkens2
1 Department of Community Medicine, Malmö University Hospital, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden, 2 Department of Economics and Lund University Centre for Health Economics, Malmö University Hospital, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden
Background: Studies have demonstrated that when parents shoulder considerable financial responsibilities, adverse health outcomes may occur. The present study assesses the association between economic stress and self-rated health in a sample of Swedish parents, and especially how this relation is affected by foreign origin and employment status. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 5,600 individuals between the ages of 21 and 81 in Malmö, Sweden. The total response rate was 69%. Among the respondents, 824 were parents having at least one child living at home. The main exposures were such sociodemographic variables as country of origin and employment status, and economic stress. The outcome variable was self-rated health. Results: Of the parents in the study, the 34.7% coded as exposed to economic stress showed a significantly increased odds ratio for poor self-rated health (OR=3.12, 95% CI: 2.01–4.84) adjusted for age and sex. After controlling for foreign origin and unemployment, the odds ratio remained statistically significant regarding exposure to economic stress (OR=1.94; 1.16–3.23). In the multivariate model, foreign origin and unemployment were also strongly associated with poor self-rated health (OR=1.78, 95% CI: 1.12–2.88; OR=1.67, 95% CI: 1.01–2.75, respectively). The adjusted population-attributable risk for poor self-rated health was estimated to be 27.4% for economic stress, 26.6% for foreign origin, and 16.7% for unemployment. Conclusions: Parental economic stress was associated with low self-rated health to a statistically significant degree, even when accounting for employment status and foreign origin. It, therefore, deserves to be seriously considered as an potential public health risk factor among Swedish families.
Keywords: economic stress, employment status, foreign origin, parents, self-rated health
Received 5 September 2001. Accepted 5 June 2002.
* Correspondence: Per-Olof Östergren, MD, PhD, Department of Community Medicine, Malmö University Hospital, Lund University, S-205 02, Sweden, tel. +46 40 332 668, fax +46 40 336 265, e-mail: per-olof.ostergren{at}smi.mas.lu.se
Sadly, Bertil Hanson passed away in June 2000
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