Health Trajectories and Their Associated Factors in the Korea Welfare Panel Study: Inequalities between People with and without Disabilities

Abstract

This study was aimed at examining self-rated health trajectories of health and their associated factors among people aged 19 and over in Korea. Also, whether these estimated results differ according to people with and without disabilities was analyzed. For these purposes, we used latent growth curve modeling and multi-group analysis involving 14,613 individuals who participated in the Korean Welfare Panel Study from 2006 to 2014. Major findings are as follows. 1) Multi-group analysis revealed that health trajectories differed between people with and without disabilities. Specifically, health status was worse in people with disabilities’ than in people without disabilities. 2) Multi-group analysis of conditional model revealed that health trajectories and their associated factors differed between people with and without disabilities. These results can be divided into four types: ① inequality intensified (i.e., aged), ② inequality maintained (i.e., w/disabled: education, employment status, residential environment) ③ inequality alleviated (i.e., w/disabled: income, number of outpatient visits; w/o disabled: income, education), ④ non effected (i.e., w/disabled: marital status, smoking; w/o disabled: gender). These findings suggest that the health related interventions should be planned considering the differences between the disabled and non-disabled people.