Characteristics of employment history and self-perceived barriers to healthcare access.

"Conflicts of interest : None declared."

"Funding SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006–062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005–028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006–028812) and FP7 (SHAREPREP: N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: N°227822, SHARE M4: N°261982). Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the US National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064, HHSN271201300071C) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org). This study has been partly funded by the Heine Research Academies Düsseldorf. We acknowledge financial support from the Open Access Publication Fund of UKE—Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf and DFG—German Research Foundation. Conflicts of interest: None declared. Key PointsPeople in advantaged social positions have better access to healthcare.Perceived barriers to healthcare access are linked to past working lives.We did not find variations in the association between career characteristics and access barriers by country-level healthcare system indicators."