Impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on overall and health-related quality of life

BACKGROUND Our objective was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic status and subjective social class on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) vs. overall quality of life (QOL). METHODS We performed a longitudinal analysis using data regarding 8250 individuals drawn from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). We analyzed differences between HRQOL and QOL in individuals of various socioeconomic strata (high, middle, or low household income and education levels) and subjective social classes (high, middle, or low) at baseline (2009). RESULTS Individuals with low household incomes and of low subjective social class had the highest probability of reporting discrepant HRQOL and QOL scores (B: 4.796; P < 0.0001), whereas individuals with high household incomes and high subjective social class had the lowest probability of discrepant HRQOL and QOL scores (B: -3.625; P = 0.000). Similar trends were seen when education was used as a proxy for socioeconomic status. CONCLUSION In conclusion, both household income/subjective social class and education/subjective social class were found to have an impact on the degree of divergence between QOL and HRQOL. Therefore, in designing interventions, socioeconomic inequalities should be taken into account through the use of multi-dimensional measurement tools.