HEALTH INEQUALITIES IN POLAND: TRENDS AND DETERMINANTS

Since the beginning of the 1990s. Poland has been experiencing large-scale social and economic changes associated with the transition to a market economy. A favourable trend in health and mortality observed in Poland are quite similar to those in other Central European Countries. The purpose of the study is to assess whether all socioeconomic groups participated equally in these positive changes or whether certain groups lagged behind.
Healthy life expectancy and concentration index have been employed to measures of social inequality in health. Self-rated health has been adopted as health indicator. Education level, living conditions and marital status have served as a variable describing the social status. To assess the importance of selected socio-economic determinants in explaining differences in health status in Poland multivariate binary logistic was conducted. Presented analyses are based on data from the Health Survey 1996 and the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS-Pl 2011).
The proportion of person years lived in good health increased during the analyzed period and the obtained results suggest the compression of morbidity in Poland. Regarding inequality in health, there is a clear social gradient for both men and women. The odds of education level is more important and weakly dependent on time analysis.