OREANDA-NEWS. Of all persons aged 25 to 64 living in the European Union (EU), around three-quarters perceived their health status as very good or good, slightly fewer than 20% as fair and below 7% as bad or very bad. Being an important socio-economic factor, the education level has an influence on health status: while just over 60% of the EU population aged 25-64 with a low education level perceived their health as very good or good, this proportion hit 85% for those with a tertiary education level. This pattern is observed for all ages between 25 and 64.

This information is issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, on the occasion of the World Health Day, celebrated each 7 April. The indicator presented in this news release only shows a small part of the large amount of data related to health available at Eurostat.

Highest share of population feeling healthy in Greece and Ireland
Among the EU Member States in 2014, more than 8 out of ten persons aged 25 to 64 felt in very good or good health conditions in Greece (84.6%) and Ireland (84.2%), ahead of Sweden (82.9%), Cyprus (82.7%), Malta (82.6%) and the Netherlands (80.1%).

In contrast, the highest share of the population aged 25 to 64 perceiving their health as bad or very bad was recorded in Croatia (13.4%), followed by Hungary (11.4%) and Portugal (11.3%).

Highest gap in self-perceived health between low and high educated people in Poland, lowest in Bulgaria
A clear link can be established between educational attainment and self-perceived health. In general in the EU Member States, the higher the education level is, the higher the share of people feeling healthy is. The largest difference between education levels in the share of people aged 25 to 64 perceiving their health as very good or good was recorded in 2014 in Poland (38.6% for people aged 25 to 64 with a low education level vs. 83.0% for those with a high education level, or a 44.4 percentage points difference), followed by Croatia (with a 42.8 pp gap) and Slovenia (42.4 pp).

At the opposite end of the scale, gaps of less than 20 percentage points were registered in Bulgaria (with a 17.7 pp gap), Malta (17.8 pp), Spain (18.3 pp) and Greece (19.0 pp). At EU level, the difference between the share of people aged 25 to 64 with low education level feeling healthy (61.3%) and that of people with high education level (85.0%) stood at 23.7 pp in 2014.