Poll: Ohioans’ health tied to income, education

New analysis from the Ohio Health Issues Poll shows that Ohioans with higher incomes and more education, two upstream factors of health, reported being in better health.

The 2015 Ohio Health Issues Poll (OHIP), funded by Interact for Health, asked Ohio adults “In general, would you say your health is excellent, very good, good, fair or poor?” Nearly half of Ohio adults (47 percent) reported that their health was excellent or very good. About 3 in 10 (33 percent) said their health was good, and 2 in 10 (20 percent) reported fair or poor health.

Better self-reported health, however, is strongly associated with higher incomes, OHIP found. In 2015, nearly 6 in 10 adults earning more than 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (56 percent) reported excellent or very good health. This compares with only 35 percent of adults earning 200 percent FPL and below.

Likewise, OHIP found that adults with more education reported better health. More than 6 in 10 college graduates (64 percent) reported excellent or very good health. Only 4 in 10 Ohio adults with less than a college degree reported excellent or very good health.

The findings mirror new national research released on Friday by economists at the Brookings Institution that found that life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earners improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent (Source: “Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing,” New York Times, Feb. 12, 2016).  

“This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern.