Effects of healthcare access and financial status on self-rated health among adults living alone in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Assessments of the overall health status of people living alone are important for developing health promotion programs and delivering appropriate health services. In the context of universal social health insurance system of South Korea, the relationship between failure to access health-care and self-rated health among adults living alone has given little attention. In addition, the influence of objective financial status on self-rated health in adults living alone has not explored so far. The sample of the present study comprised 4,852 adults who participated in the cross-sectional 2015 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The main finding was that the unmet health-care needs resulting from the inability to access health-care services during the previous 12 months was independently associated with fair or poor self-rated health, especially for women living alone. Having an income below the subsistence level was significantly associated with fair or poor self-rated health among women living alone. The findings of this study demonstrate the need for policies enabling appropriate delivery of health-care services, especially for women living alone. It is necessary to provide community-based monitoring programs related to general health for women living alone with a household income below the minimum cost-of-living.

KEYWORDS:

• Health-care access
• unmet health care needs
• financial status
• living alone
• self-rated health

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express sincere thanks to Professor Lorraine Sherr and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and recommendations. The author acknowledges the support provided by the Hanyang Women’s University (2019-2).

Disclosure statement

The author declares that I have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The author asserts that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. This study used the public anonymous data and was exempted from obtaining informed consent from ethics review.

Additional information

Funding

This study received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.