Self-Rated Health Over Time in Greece

Self-rated health has been shown to have predictive power for mortality and is thus a useful indicator to summarize the health status of individuals. We use self-rated health (SRH) to investigate how the health status of individuals changed during the severe financial crisis that hit Greece in the 2010s. The data show some deterioration in SRH but no increase in polarization or inequality. Potential explanations for these subdued changes are sought in the developments over time in some of the variables that self-rated health is associated with. More specifically, the increase in unemployment and inactivity during the financial crisis impacted on SRH—more on lowering the probability of being in a very good state rather than in increasing the probability of being in a very bad state. At the same time, however, during the crisis, the percentage of individuals smoking decreased thus compensating the deterioration in SRH from the decline in economic activity. The results presented are nothing more than associations and further research is needed to find causal interpretations of the change in SRH.