Chronic Diseases and Socioeconomic Factors

The socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors, as well as advances in technology and medicine, have led to an unprecedented increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases, which have become the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. In this chapter, the authors aim to unveil the relation between socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors and chronic diseases among the Greek population. For this purpose, data from the SHARE 50+ database (specifically from the easySHARE v.6.1.1) were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 26 software. The research sample comprises of 3,584 Greek citizens of age between 50-75 years. The research findings indicate that 60.1% of the research sample have at least one chronic condition, with low education level to associate with a greater prevalence of chronic diseases. Chronic diseases also are correlated to poor self-perceived health and quality of life, especially to those with a low socioeconomic status. The research results are in accordance with the findings in the international literature.