Better health reports when the grass is greener on your side of the fence? A cross-sectional study in older persons

To study whether the luxury goods make older people feel in better health and whether this association is similar in higher and lower social classes. SMILE consists of a Dutch general population consisting of 2.637 men and women aged 60 years and older in 2007. The SF-36 was used to measure health-related functioning. In the lower social class, having many luxury goods was related to feeling in better physical (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.39-3.07) and mental health (OR 1.79, 95% CI 1.21-2.64), but not in the higher social class. There might be a health benefit of keeping up appearances, snobbism, and "conspicuous consumption" in older people from lower social classes.