Introduction: This study aimed to measure socioeconomic inequalities in Self Assessed Health (SAH) and evaluate
the determinants of such inequalities in terms of their contributions amongst the Turkish population.
Methods: We used data from the Turkish part of World Health Survey 2003 with 10,287 respondents over 18 years
old. Concentration index (CI) of SAH was calculated as a measure of socioeconomic inequalities in health, and
contributions of each determinant to inequality were evaluated using a decomposition method.
Results: In total 952 participants (9.3%) rated their health status as either bad or very bad. The CI for SAH was
-0.15, suggesting that suboptimal SAH was reported more by those categorised as poor. The multiple logistic
regression results indicated that having secondary, primary or less than primary school education, not being
married and being in the lowest wealth quintile, significantly increased the risk of having poor SAH. The largest
contributions to inequality were attributed to education level (70.7%), household economic status (9.7%) and
geographical area lived in (8.4%).
Conclusion: The findings indicate that socioeconomic inequalities measured by SAH are apparent amongst the
Turkish population. Education and household wealth were the greatest contributing factors to SAH inequality.
These inequalities need to be explicitly addressed and vulnerable subgroups should be targeted to reduce the
socioeconomic disparities.