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Health gap has grown among young us adults, study finds by ferujkll sdff
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Health gap has grown among young us adults, study finds |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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Levels of health disparity have increased substantially for peopleborn in the United States after 1980, according to new research. The study also found that health disparity tends to increase aspeople move into middle age, before declining as people reach oldage. These two results suggest that the gap between the healthiest andleast healthy people in the United States as a whole will growlarger for the next one or even two decades as the youngergenerations grow older and replace previous generations. "As young people today reach middle age and preceding cohorts witha smaller health gap die off, we expect health disparities in thewhole population to grow even larger," said Hui Zheng, lead authorof the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio StateUniversity. A lot will depend on whether future generations will continue thetrend, seen in post-baby boomers, of large health disparities.
"If that trend continues, as I expect it will, health disparitiesin the whole population will increase in the coming decades," Zhengsaid. The health gap has not always been growing, according to the study.Health disparities continuously declined from those born early inthe 20th century to the baby boomer cohort, before increasing forpost-baby boomer cohorts, especially those born after 1980. Zheng conducted the study with Yang Yang of the University of NorthCarolina-Chapel Hill and Kenneth Land of Duke University. Theirresults appear in the December issue of the journal AmericanSociological Review.
This study provides one of the clearest, most comprehensivepictures ever of health disparities in the United States because ofa methodological innovation, Zheng said. Zheng and his colleagues combined two statistical models thatallowed them, for the first time, to disentangle how healthdisparity over time is affected by three factors: people's age,when they were born, and the time period when their health isassessed. "We have never before been able to look at all three of thesefactors together and see how each interacts with the others toaffect changes in health disparities," Zheng said. The study is based on data from the National Health InterviewSurvey for the 24-year period from 1984 to 2007.
The survey, whichincludes about 30,000 people each year, is conducted by theNational Center for Health Statistics. The survey asked respondents to rate their own health on afive-point scale from poor to excellent. While this is aself-report and not based on any objective health data, previousstudies have shown that self-reported health is a good indicator ofobjective health and is actually better at predicting mortalityamong the elderly than doctor assessments, Zheng said. The researchers took into account a variety of other factors thatmay affect health, including gender, race, marital status, workstatus, education and income.
Overall, the study found that late baby boomers - those born from1955 to 1964 - reported better health than any other generation. Inaddition, self-rated health has significantly declined since thelate 1990s. One of the key findings was the large gap in self-reported healththat opened up for people born since 1980. That means people aremore spread out among the five health categories, from excellent topoor, Zheng said.
This data can't explain why health disparities grew, but researchby other sociologists provides potential explanations, Zheng said. For one, income inequality increased dramatically in the past threedecades in the United States, which could impact accessibility tohealth care and other important resources. Also, an increase in immigrants, both documented and undocumented,has probably changed the distribution of health ratings in thecountry, while the growing obesity crisis has added to those in poor health. Finally, a growing "digital divide" in access to medical and healthinformation on the internet has created disparities in healthknowledge among different populations, which can affect healthchoices and outcomes.
The main reason that health disparity is expected to grow in thewhole population in the coming decades has to do with what ishappening among young adults born since 1980, Zheng said. Current young adults have a larger health gap than precedingcohorts and, in addition, disparity rises as people move from youthto middle age, peaking at about age 55. Disparity then declinesamong the elderly, according to the study. Those two factors will work together to increase disparity in thewhole population as young adults replace their elders in thepopulation. Most young people are generally healthy, which keeps disparitieslow, Zheng said.
As people age and some develop health problems anddiseases, disparity grows. But these disparities fall again in oldage as sicker people die and only the healthier people remain. Thenarrower disparities in old age may also result from the fact thatall older people suffer frailty and tend to share the same healthrisk factors. Another factor may be equalization of health careusage and protections through Medicare coverage after age 65.
The study also found gender differences in health across thelifespan. There is a relatively large gap in early adulthood, withmen being healthier than women. This gap narrows until about age61, as men are more likely to experience more severe forms ofchronic conditions, such as heart disease . The gap widens again after age 61, as only the healthier mensurvive and there is a relatively larger share of women with poorerhealth alive at older ages. While this study focused on health, Zheng said this new model canbe used to study other types of inequality, such as income,education or wealth.
"This model provides a powerful framework to identify and study theevolution of inequalities across age, period and cohorts," Zhengsaid. Written by Jeff Grabmeier Additional References Citations. I am Luggage & Travel Bags writer, reports some information about api spec 6a , aluminium casting process.
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