Non-communicable diseases, socio-economic status, lifestyle and well-being in Italy: An additive Bayesian network model

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to investigate the statistical association, on a sample of Italian subjects, extracted by Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset, between chronic diseases (occurrence or number of chronic diseases) and socio-economic and behavioural determinants (lifestyle indicators, QoL indicators, cognitive functioning variables). To this aim, additive Bayesian network (ABN) analysis was used. The resulting ABN model shows that better educated individuals have better health outcomes, age is direct and gender is an indirect determinant of the number of chronic diseases. Furthermore, self-perceived health is associated with lower number of chronic diseases, lower physical limitations and higher quality of life and these indicators can be considered within a unitary vision to represent well-being of elderly people, as they share a similar distribution by gender and age.