Health Perceptions in Latin America
Publication year: 2011
This is the first study that uniformly analyzes health perceptions in all of LatinAmerica and tests in a systematic way their relation to economic conditions at thecountry, income group and individual levels. The study uses three types of healthself-assessment questions: i) health satisfaction; ii) health status on a scale of 0-10; and iii) the EuroQol 5D instrument (EQ-5D), which asks about mobility, selfcare,usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. The empiricalanalysis finds support for the hypothesis that cultural differences betweencountries prevent cross-national comparisons of health perceptions, but it does notfind support for the widely held view that the same applies within countries,presumably because the poor are more tolerant of their health problems.
