Health-related quality of life by disease and socio economic group in the general population in Sweden

Measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) on population level, is be coming increasingly important for priority setting in health policy. In the health economics field, it is common to measure HRQoL in terms of health-s tate utilities or QoL weights. This study investigates the feasibility of o btaining mean QoL weights by mapping survey data to the generic HRQoL measu re EQ-5D and to describe the HRQoL in terms of mean QoL weights in certain disease and socio-economic groups. Data from the 1996-1997 Survey of Living Conditions, interviews with a representative sample (16-84 years) of the S wedish population (n = 11 698) were used. The mean QoL weight decreased fro m 0.91 among the youngest to 0.61 among the oldest, and was lower for women than for men. The QoL weight was 0.88 in the highest socio-economic group and 0.78 in the lowest socio-economic group. The QoL weight was lowest (0.3 8) among persons with depression and highest among persons with hypertensio n (0.71). The QoL weight decreased from 0.95 for persons with very good glo bal self-rated health to 0.20 for persons with very poor global self-rated health. The results support the feasibility and validity of the mapping app roach. HRQoL varies greatly between socio-economic groups and different dis ease groups. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.