What accounts for the rise of low self-rated health during the recent economic crisis in Europe?

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for the pooled sample of 26 EU countries

	2008		2011
	Mean	SD^a	Mean	SD^a
SRH status: 1–5 scale, 1 = very bad, 5 = very good	3.908	0.852	3.844	0.878
Very bad SRH	0.009	0.094	0.013	0.112
Very bad or bad SRH	0.060	0.238	0.076	0.265
Very bad, bad or fair SRH	0.267	0.442	0.285	0.452
Female	0.591	0.492	0.563	0.496
Age	44.343	12.043	46.004	12.412
Real equivalent household income (Euro in 2004 prices)	18,824.3	14,381.9	16,945.3	14,837.6
Poor (income < 60% of the median)	0.154	0.361	0.173	0.378
Rich (income > 200% of the median)	0.083	0.276	0.083	0.276
Relatively poor	0.116	0.320	0.125	0.330
Relatively rich	0.057	0.231	0.059	0.236
Material deprivation	0.154	0.361	0.178	0.382
Primary education and less	0.114	0.317	0.102	0.303
Lower secondary education	0.154	0.361	0.155	0.362
Upper secondary education	0.462	0.499	0.472	0.499
Tertiary education	0.270	0.444	0.271	0.444
Married	0.587	0.492	0.610	0.488
No longer married	0.135	0.341	0.138	0.344
Never married	0.279	0.448	0.252	0.434
Employed, full-time	0.544	0.498	0.519	0.500
Employed, part-time	0.125	0.331	0.107	0.310
Unemployed	0.058	0.233	0.072	0.259
Retired	0.126	0.332	0.146	0.353
Disabled	0.041	0.198	0.040	0.196
Inactive	0.106	0.308	0.116	0.320
Densely populated area	0.452	0.498	0.468	0.499
Intermediate populated area	0.319	0.466	0.289	0.453
Thinly populated area	0.257	0.437	0.316	0.465
Observations	43,456

ISSN: 1475-9276