Complexity of the Socioeconomic Status and its Disparity as a Determinant of Health

Abstract

The socioeconomic (SE) status is considered tobe one of the most important health risk factorsnowadays. A simple search showed that onlyin 2011, more than 1100 articles were cited inPubmed about the relationship of health and SEstatus. However, there are many inquiries aboutthis association. The SE status is a complex andmultidimensional issue, and there is no goldstandard method to measure it, [1]More importantly,the impact of SE status on different aspects ofhealth is not clear.[2]The SE status is a broad and multidimensionalterm.[3] The first component of the SE statuscovers the social class of subjects; which means,it considers if the person has an acceptable socialposition. Usually, education is measured as aproxy of a social class of people; unfortunately,the other aspects of the social class of people aremuch more complex to be approached.[1] However,the educational level of people is measured withdifferent scales, from a very simple binary scale(literate / illiterate) up to a numeric scale (year ofeducation).