The measurement of socio-economic status: Investigation of gender-and age-specific indicators in Australia: National Health Survey 1995

Objective: To investigate the correlations between age- and gender-specific measures of socio-economic status versus health status as measured by the SF-36. Design: Population based study. Participants: 38187 people aged between 18 to 79 years who participated in the National Health Survey in 1995. Results: Factor analysis produced consistent results that were interpreted in terms of five conceptually meaningful domains (employment, housing, migration, family unit and education). The relative rank of the factors differs between groups and in some cases factor composition requires items to be added or deleted from the conceptual domains. Conclusions: Age- and gender-specific SES scores based on these factors had stronger associations with the physical and mental components of SF-36 than either an area based index or scores derived from males aged 40-44 years. Overall the results supported the hypothesis that SES measures composed of social and demographic items exhibit important age- and gender-specific differences which are relevant for health.