Country material distribution and adolescents' perceived health: multilevel study of adolescents in 27 countries.

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of country material distribution on adolescents' perceptions of health. DESIGN Cross sectional multilevel study. SETTING Data were collected from the school based health behaviour in school aged children: WHO cross national study 1997/98, which includes students from 27 European and North American countries. PARTICIPANTS 12 0381 students in year 6, 8, and 10 who were attending school classes on the day of data collection. MAIN RESULT Adolescents in countries with a high dispersion of family affluence were more likely to have self rated poor health even after controlling for individual family level of affluence and family social resources. CONCLUSION There are substantial inequalities in subjective health across European and North American countries related to the distribution of family material resources in these countries.