Sci Rep. 2025 Feb 13;15(1):5394. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-89947-5.

ABSTRACT

Self-rated health is a major indicator of an individual’s overall health status, but its development during midlife to old age, as well as influence of sociodemographic and work-related factors on it, are poorly understood. We used longitudinal individual-level data to examine trajectories of self-rated health and their determinants in 38,163 participants (median age 50 (range 36-66) years at baseline) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the Finnish Longitudinal Study on Aging Municipal Employees, and the French GAZ and ELectricité study from Europe and the Health and Retirement Study from the US. A group-based latent trajectory analysis showed that self-rated health was constantly good for over half of the participants, constantly suboptimal for about 11-21%, and it was changing, either improving or declining, for the rest. Pooled evidence suggests that being single (summary odds ratio 1.20, 95% confidence interval 1.07-1.35), medium educational attainment (1.26, 1.16-1.37), medium occupational class (1.22, 1.10-1.34), and exposure to high physical job demands (1.18, 1.08-1.29) were associated with declining self-rated health. Suboptimal self-rated health was more prevalent among those in low occupational class (1.81, 1.56-2.10), and those who experienced high physical job demands (1.52, 1.33-1.74). In these European and US populations, 23-40% of people experienced suboptimal or declining health trajectories. In conclusion, large variation in development of self-rated health from midlife to old age was observed and it was partly determined by sociodemographic and work-related factors.

PMID:39948260 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-025-89947-5