Socioeconomic and Institutional Perceptions, Inequality Attitudes, and the Determinants of Self-Rated Health: A Multilevel Cross-National Analysis Using World Values Survey Data (2017–2022)

Abstract

This paper examines the socioeconomic and institutional determines of self-rated health using the World value survey (2017-2022), which includes 93, 352 participants belonging to 63 countries. The study investigates the relationships between the perceived corruption, financial satisfaction, income level, perception of income inequality, and subjective health. The findings of this study show that the perceived corruption has a negative relationship with the self-rated health, and the effect is stronger in high perceived corruption levels. On the other hand, household financial satisfaction comes out as the least strong, the most robust predictor of which has a definite positive correlation with health outcomes. Better self-rated health is also shown to have a positive relationship with higher income levels with no significant or consistent change in attitudes towards income inequality. A life-cycle pattern can be observed: the younger adults have better health, the older adults have worse health and the women have not a little better health than men. Besides, the results indicate the significance of subjective health across countries basing on perceived economic security and the quality of governance.