Census respondents were asked to rate their health out of the categories ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Fair’, ‘Bad’, and ‘Very Bad’. To easily compare different populations’ self-reported health, we calculated the proportion of people in ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ health and called this ‘health prevalence’. Health prevalence therefore ranges from 1, in a population where everyone perceives themselves as in ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ health, to 0 if no one does. This is also how healthy life expectancy, which is used to summarise health across our whole lives, is calculated.
When we looked at how health prevalence laos rcs data varies by age and relative deprivation, we found that at all ages people living in more deprived areas, measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), are less likely to be in good health. For example, less than half of people aged between 65 and 69 living in the most deprived 10% of areas reported living in ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ health, compared to 80% of those in the least deprived decile. People living in the most deprived decile experience the same health prevalence at age 40-44 as those in the least deprived decile do at age 70-74. All of these inequalities follow a gradient: the greater the relative deprivation, the greater one’s probability of being in ill-health.
Figure 1: Health prevalence in each age group and IMD decile, calculated using Census 2021 data. Black dashed line shows average age-specific health prevalence across the whole country.