•Older persons show significant increases in self-reported health from 2002 to 2018.•Relative, but not absolute social inequality declined during this time.•Self-reported health has increased with virtually every examined demographic.•Gaps between high-income and low-income demographics remain significant, however.•High-income, post-retirement groups report better health in 2018 than low-income, pre-retirement groups. Using data from the European Social Survey 1 (2002) and 9 (2018) we show the development of self-rated health of older persons in 17 countries. We find a considerable increase of older persons reporting good or very good health between 2002 and 2018; this increase is similar in all groups examined. Absolute differences between income groups remained vastly stable. Further, in 2018 the high-income tercile of those between 65 and 80 years still reported better health than the low-income tercile of those between 49 and 64 years. Overall, self-rated health seems to have improved in Europe but there are still signs of a considerable gap between low-income groups and high-income groups.