Does a commonly used measure of health status bias socioeconomic health inequalities?
It has been suggested that socioeconomic gradients in ill health may be underestimated because disadvantaged groups expect their health to be worse, and hence are less likely to report health problems. We tested this in data from the two older cohorts of the Twenty-07 Study. People were asked the commonly used standard question about long-standing illness from the UK General Household Survey – “Do you have a long-standing illness, disability or infirmity? By long-standing I mean anything that has troubled you over a period of time or that is likely to affect you over a period of time?” Participants were then given additional prompts to identify additional health problems. We found similar differences in reported health between different social groups regardless of which type of questioning was used, before and after additional prompting. Our findings therefore do not support the idea that more disadvantaged social groups are more stoical and more likely to need detailed prompting in or
