Cumulative exposure to economic hardship and self-rated health among Korean women: An exploration of age heterogeneity

초록

Purpose: Acknowledging the importance of subjective financial measures that objective indicators may not be able to fully capture, this study investigates whether and how perceived economic hardship influences self-rated health among women. Specifically, it examines the cumulative effects of perceived economic hardship while exploring variations across different age groups. Methods: This study analyzed data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (2006-2022), including 12,800 participants who experienced varying levels of economic hardship. Economic hardship was assessed based on subjective perceptions reported across consecutive survey waves (ranging from 1 wave to over 4 waves), while self-rated health was measured on a five-point scale. To account for unmeasured individual-level heterogeneity, fixed effects models were employed in the analysis. Results: Prolonged exposure to economic hardship is associated with greater declines in self-rated health, with longer durations of hardship leading to increasingly severe negative impacts. Also, age differences were observed, as older adults experienced significantly larger declines in self-rated health compared to their younger counterparts as the duration of hardship increased. Conclusion: The findings on the cumulative effects of perceived economic hardship on health underscore the importance of incorporating subjective measures of economic conditions into research and policy discussions.

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