Social Factors that Impact Your Health - Income, Education, & More (2024)

FAQs

Social Factors that Impact Your Health - Income, Education, & More? ›

Examples of SDOH include: Safe housing, transportation, and neighborhoods. Racism, discrimination, and violence. Education, job opportunities, and income.

Social determinants of health such as poverty, unequal access to health care, lack of education, stigma, and racism are underlying, contributing factors of health inequities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to achieving improvements in people's lives by reducing health inequities.

The impact is pervasive and deeply embedded in our society, creating inequities in access to a range of social and economic benefits—such as housing, education, wealth, and employment. These inequities put people at higher risk of poor health.

Social and economic factors affect how well and how long we live. Social and economic factors include factors such as income, education, employment, community safety and social support.

Social factors represent another important set of influences on consumer behavior. Specifically, these are the effects of people and groups influencing one another through culture and subculture, social class, reference groups, and family.

The following list provides examples of the social determinants of health, which can influence health equity in positive and negative ways: Income and social protection. Education. Unemployment and job insecurity.

Unmet social needs, environmental factors, and barriers to accessing health care contribute to worse health outcomes for people with lower incomes. For example, people with limited finances may have more difficulty obtaining health insurance or paying for expensive procedures and medications.

These various forms of human capital are an important way that education affects health. For example, education may strengthen coping skills that reduce the damage of stress. Greater personal control may also lead to healthier behaviors, partly by increasing knowledge.

As emphasized above, education is a key social determinant of health largely because of how it impacts other social determinants of health. Educational attainment, in particular, is linked to job attainment and then income, which can influence the impact other SDOH have on individuals.

Socioeconomic factors affect one's ability to engage in health activities, afford medical care and housing, and manage stress. For example, employment provides income, which enables access to housing, education, childcare, food, medical care, and other needs.

What role does education play in adult health? ›

According to a report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services—adults who have obtained higher levels of education have less exposure to stressors related to economic hardship. This also makes them less likely to adopt unhealthy coping behaviors.

Social factors—or their consequences in social and physical environments— may also influence health by interacting with a person's genotype in ways that can trigger or suppress the phenotypic expression of deleterious (or favorable) genes that may be related to obesity, heart and lung disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Social factors in learning refer to the influence of social interactions, relationships, and cultural context on an individual's cognitive development and educational outcomes.

Examples include churches, clubs, schools, online social networks, play groups, professional groups, and even a group of friends and acquaintances. Individuals may be influenced by the groups of which they are members.

In fact, cultivating human connections is just as important as eating healthy food or physical activity. Poor social skills harm our health. Low social health puts us at risk of social isolation, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

Socioeconomic factors affect one's ability to engage in health activities, afford medical care and housing, and manage stress. For example, employment provides income, which enables access to housing, education, childcare, food, medical care, and other needs.

Factors affecting social health are mental stress, bad transport facilities, and also the environment of our surroundings.

There is growing recognition that social risk factors – such as poverty, minority race and/or ethnicity, social isolation, and limited community resources – play a major role in health, and significant gaps remain in health and in life expectancy based on poverty, race, ethnicity, and community environment.