Limiting long-term illness and the experience of financial strain in Sweden

This study aims to investigate whether those individuals exposed to certain socioeconomic events (e.g. unemployment or early retirement) are more at risk of experiencing financial strain if they are also exposed to some limiting long-term illness.

This is a cross-sectional study using a Swedish sample of 41,497 individuals between the ages of 25 and 65 selected from the Survey of Living Conditions of Statistics Sweden. The measure of association used in the study is the prevalence odds ratio, and interaction analyses are performed in order to assess differential susceptibility to experience financial strain.

The results show that young persons, living in poor households, unemployed or early retired, reporting a high degree of impairment, present a greater probability of experiencing financial strain. Severe impairment has proved to be a component in the possible causal chain leading to the experience of financial strain, which interacts with the factors studied, increasing significantly the probability of certain groups experiencing financial hardship.

The results sustain the hypothesis that social consequences of illness, such as financial strain, might contribute to aggravate inequalities between socioeconomic groups under certain conditions such as unemployment and poverty.