title: Sexual minority status and self-rated health: the importance of socioeconomic status, age, and sex.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  I examined how sexual minority status, as indicated by sex of sexual partners, is associated with self-rated health and how socioeconomic status suppresses and age and sex moderate this association.
  
  
  METHODS
  I used multinomial logistic regression to analyze aggregated data from the 1991 to 2010 General Social Survey, a population-based data set (n = 13,480).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Respondents with only different-sex partners or with any same-sex partners reported similar levels of health. With socioeconomic status added to the model, respondents with any same-sex partners reported worse health than those with only different-sex partners, but only if sexual intercourse with same-sex partners occurred in the previous 5 years. Age and sex moderated this relationship: having any same-sex partners was associated with worse health for women but not men and among younger adults only.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The relationship between sexual minority status and self-rated health varies across sociodemographic groups. Future research should use population-level data to examine other health outcomes and continue to explore how the intersection of sexual minority status and other sociodemographic indicators shapes health.
authors.affiliation: Population Research Center and Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. mbthomeer@utexas.edu
authors.forename: Mieke Beth
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Thomeer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008913:Minority Groups; D057566:Self Report; D012737:Sex Factors; D012747:Sexual Partners; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult