title: Health differences between European countries.
abstract: This paper examines self-reported health among individuals in 21 European countries. The purpose is to analyze how both individual- and country-level characteristics influence health. The study is based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) conducted in 2003 and employs hierarchical modelling (N=38,472). We present three main findings: (1) individual-level characteristics, such as age, education, economic satisfaction, social network, unemployment, and occupational status are related to the health of individuals, both for women and men; (2) we tested how societal features, such as public expenditure on health, socioeconomic development, lifestyle, and social capital (social trust) were related to subjective health. Among the country-level characteristics, socioeconomic development, measured as GDP per capita (logarithm), is the indicator that is most strongly associated with better health, after controlling for individual-level characteristics; (3) the eastern European countries stand out as the countries where individuals report the poorest health. In our models, the individual-level variables explain 60% of the variance between countries, whereas 40% is explained by the macro-level variables.
authors.affiliation: SNF, Bergen, Norway. karenm.olsen@snf.no
authors.forename: Karen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Olsen
authors.forename: Svenn-Age
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Dahl
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology; D004467:Economics; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011640:Public Policy; D012944:Social Support; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors