Socio-Economic conditions and individual health in Italy

The last economic crisis has produced both a worsening of population socio-economic conditions and a decline of population health. Over decades, scholars have investigated the relationship between socio-economic conditions and individual health. However, most of these studies focus only one dimension (psychological or physical) of individual health. In this paper, we investigate the socio-economic determinants of individual health in Italy using an indicator that take into account three different dimensions of individual health. Using data drawn from Self-Reported Health Status for the year 2013, and applying the Instrumental variables method (IV), the paper shows two important results: 1) The perceived individual health is strongly correlated to income, economic status and life satisfaction, while the impact of aging is very low 2). The correlation between education level and individual health is negatively. This result can be explained considering individual labor status. Indeed, the difficulty to access to the labor market determines that individual’s expectation about job, wage, and quality of work are inconsistent with the “reality”. The consequence is that, individuals better-educated have higher expectations regarding their lives, but often, these expectations do not find correspondence in the Italian labour market, and this mismatch produces negative psychological effects, which contribute to reduce the general individual health.