Health related quality of life (HRQOL) among low socioeconomic population in Malaysia

Abstract

Background The rapid growth of economy and increasing cost of living in Malaysia have given significant impact especially to the lowest household income population. The main objective of this study was to determine risk factors for low quality of life (QOL) and poor health status of this population. Methods This was a cross sectional study design. A total of 347 respondents from low household income groups, including persons with disability and Orang Asli were recruited from E-kasih. A semi-guided self-administered questionnaire was used. QOL measured by EQ. 5D utility value and health status measured by visual analogue score (VAS). Descriptive statistic, bivariate Chi-square analysis and binary logistic regression were conducted to determine factors influencing low QOL and poor health status. Results Majority of the respondents were Malay, female (61%), 63% were married, 60% were employed and 46% with total household income of less than 1 thousand Ringgit Malaysia. 70% of them were not having any chronic medical problems. Factors that associated with low QOL were male, single, low household income, and present chronic medical illness, while poor health status associated with female, lower education level and present chronic medical illness. Logistic regression analysis has showed that determinants of low QOL was present chronic illness [AOR 4.15 95%CI (2.42, 7.13)], while determinants for poor health status were; female [AOR 1.94 95%CI (1.09,3.44)], lower education [AOR 3.07 95%CI (1.28,7.34)] and present chronic illness [AOR 2.53 95%CI (1.39,4.61)]. Conclusion Low socioeconomic population defined as low total household income in this study. Low QOL of this population determined by present chronic illness, while poor health status determined by gender, education level and chronic medical illness.

The Influence of Income and Livelihood Diversification on Health-Related Quality of Life in Rural Ethiopia

“…This finding is inconsistent with previous reports, which have suggested that being female is a predictor of low HRQOL in the Ethiopian communities and elsewhere [12,13,28,34]. Another report suggested that males with low SES had low HRQOL [14]. It is worth mentioning that a low percentage of female-headed household (19.30%) participated in our study.…”

“…In this work, we observed that a lower income negatively influenced physical health, which strongly supports the hypothesis that HRQOL decreases as income declines and is consistent with other previous studies [10,[13][14][15][16]. Pappa et al reported that a low income may influence physical health rather than mental health, as seen in our study [13].…”

“…A hospital-based study in Ethiopia similarly reported that almost half of the study participants were below average score in all domains of HRQOL [27]. This may mainly be considered as a consequence of the poorly developed economy and low SES, as some evidence has indicated low SES adversely impacts HRQOL [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]41]. Our results also recognized that the reliability of SF-8 items had excellent internal consistency in terms of both Cronbach's α coefficients and item-total correlation.…”

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that socioeconomic factors are an independent predictor of HRQOL, whereas lower SES influences a lower self-assessed health status [11][12][13][14]. This relationship has practical implications for all socioeconomic indicators, including occupation, education, and income [8,14]. Reports have also addressed the direct association between low income and worse physical and mental HRQOL [15,16].…”

Correlation between exercise, personal income level and health-related quality of life in patients with newly diagnosed stable angina

“…Among these factors, monthly income was the strongest factor associated with not only physical HRQL but also mental HRQL, and patients with a monthly income ≥5000 Yuan showed higher HRQL scores than those of patients with a monthly income < 5000 Yuan. Indeed, personal or family income level has been previously associated with reduced HRQL in some chronic medical conditions and cardiovascular diseases [29–32]. Patients with lower income may have a limited ability to obtain effective treatments, which may improve their clinical outcomes.…”