[EQ] Health Perceptions in Latin America

Health Perceptions in Latin America

Eduardo Lora

IDB WORKING PAPER SERIES No. IDB-WP-290 – December 2011

Inter-American Development Bank IADB/BID

Available online PDF [53p.] at: http://bit.ly/KJ4HY5

“………..The study uses identical polls of representative samples of the populations of 19 Latin American countries, which contain three types of health self-assessment questions:

i)   satisfied/dissatisfied with own health, which also exists for other 110 countries;
ii)  health status on a scale of 0-10; and
iii) the EQ-5D instrument, which asks about the presence of health problems in five dimensions: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and

    anxiety/depression.

The national averages of health satisfaction of Latin American countries do not differ significantly from other regions of the world. The differences between countries around the world do not have a robust relation with aggregate economic variables or traditional health indicators, but they do have a robust association with variables such as religion or the geographic location of the country, which could reflect cultural differences that shape health expectations and aspirations.

 

The influence of such cross-country cultural differences is more directly detectable when studying (in Latin American countries) the relation between (individual) responses to the health satisfaction and health self-rating questions.

 

Simple tolerance indicators of health self-rating are used as a way to measure cultural differences in health perceptions across countries…..”

 

 KMC/2012/SDE
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