Socioeconomic Status and Self-Rated Health in China

Guangya Liu, North Carolina State University
Feinian Chen, North Carolina State University

The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health has been of critical concern to social and behavioral scientists over the past several decades. This study focuses on China, where the external validity of the SES-health gradient has been called into question. Since the late 1970s, China has witnessed dramatic economic development together with increasingly pronounced economic disparities in most regions. A limited number of studies that have addressed the relationship between SES and health produced some paradoxical findings, including a positive association between SES and chronic diseases, that between SES and serious health conditions, and mixed effects of SES on functional status decline among elderly.This study aims to document the relationship between SES and self-rated health in the general adult Chinese population, with an emphasis on disentangling the underlying mechanisms, including the effect of economic resources, social support, and health behavior.