Abdominal adiposity and obstructive airway disease: testing insulin resistance and sleep disordered breathing mechanisms

Income gradient in health-related quality of life - the role of social networking time

BACKGROUND

Widening social class discrepancies in health persist in the United States. Although the relationship between social class and health has been well illustrated, the pathways through which social class influences the distribution of health remain unidentified. This study is designed to analyze the income-health relationship by examining the role of social networking time.

METHODS

A nationwide sample from the General Social Survey of the United States is adopted for the statistical analysis. The Healthy Days Measures developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are used to evaluate health-related quality of life in the general population. Social networking time is measured through the number of social evenings respondents spend with neighbors. Individuals' inflation-adjusted family income is used to indicate their income. The relationships between income, social networking time and health-related quality of life are calculated through multiple linear regressions, and the mediation effects of social networking time are further tested by the Sobel test with bootstrapping.

RESULTS

People with a lower income tend to spend more time socializing with their neighbors than those with a higher income. Income is positively associated with health-related quality of life. Respondents who engage more frequently in neighborhood socializing report poorer health-related quality of life. The reproduction of the income gradient in health-related quality of life through social networking time mainly persists in mental health aspects.

CONCLUSIONS

This study verifies the positive association between income and health-related quality of life. The results show that people's network ties are affected by their income and confirm the role of social networking time in the reproduction of the income gradient in health-related quality of life.

Intergenerational learning about keeping health: a qualitative regional Australian study

Understanding the conditions under which families try to influence members' health-related practices can provide information to build concepts adding to models of health promotion. This paper reports on an exploratory qualitative study examining the influences of intergenerational relationships in shaping beliefs, knowledge and practices about health and illness in a regional Australian city. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 adults with family members of other generations living in the city, all of whom had experience of asthma. We found that overall people's experience of health and illness, particularly in childhood, was taken for granted and not reflected upon. It was in the face of serious illness or death of a family member that objective knowledge about health and illness was sought and integrated within the family leading, in most cases, to significant lifestyle changes or 'doing things differently'. We drew on Bourdieu's concept of the three forms of theoretical knowledge in analysing our findings. We found the concept of knowledge as 'primary taken-for-granted experience', and the concept of praxeological knowledge as the knowledge created by the dialectical relationships between an individual subject and objectives structures were helpful. To influence individual health practices, we need to acknowledge how the family context confirms the taken-for-granted health practices of an individual and the family circumstances that might lead families to seek objective knowledge and make lifestyle changes to promote health.