Health and well-being of Czech population in a cross-age perspective

Beatrice Chromková Manea, Masaryk University

The present paper tackles the issue of health and well-being of the Czech population in a cross-age perspective. It explores the association between well-being and perceived health condition. The well-being indicators are choice variables included in the European Value Survey conducted in 2008 on a representative sample of Czech people aged 18+. The issue of well-being is investigated both at the subjective and social level: subjective well-being is measured using the personal evaluation of life satisfaction and happiness in life, whereas social well-being includes general trust in people and participation in different voluntary organizations/activities. First, it presents the main indicators used in the analysis by means of descriptive statistics. Second, it explores the relationship between perceived health condition and well-being from an age and gender perspective. Further on, it explores the relationships between perceived health condition and different elements of well-being by employing binary logistic regression procedures controlling for various socio-demographic covariates (age, gender, marital status, education, employment status, number of children and religiousness) and other correlates (control in life, trust in health care system and place of residence). The primary model resulted from the binary logistic regression shows that some of the socio-demographic variables were determinants of the proportion of individuals that reported good health condition – age, marital status, education, employment status. The second model introduces in the analysis the other covariates such as subjective and social well-being, control in life, trust in health care system and place of residence. The results indicate that subjective well-being is a relevant and significant explanatory variable of the perceived health condition. The third model included the interaction between social and subjective well-being measurements, but it did not bring any supplementary explanation in the model.