tailieunhanh - Reporting heterogeneity in self-assessed health among elderly Europeans

The abuse of older people by family members dates back to ancient times. Until the advent of initiatives to address child abuse and domestic violence in the last quarter of the 20th century, it remained a private matter, hidden from public view. Initially seen as a social welfare issue and subsequently a problem of ageing, abuse of the elderly, like other forms of family violence, has developed into a public health and criminal justice concern. These two fields – public health and criminal justice – have therefore dictated to a large extent how abuse of the elderly is viewed, how it is analysed, and how it is dealt with. This chapter focuses. | Pfarr et al. Health Economics Review 2012 2 21 http content 2 1 21 iD Health Economics Review a SpringerOpen Journal RESEARCH Open Access Reporting heterogeneity in self-assessed health among elderly Europeans Christian Pfarr1 Andreas Schmid1 and Udo Schneider1 2 Abstract Introduction Self-assessed health SAH is a frequently used measure of individuals health status. It is also prone to reporting heterogeneity. To control for reporting heterogeneity objective measures of true health need to be included in an analysis. The topic becomes even more complex for cross-country comparisons as many key variables tend to vary strongly across countries influenced by cultural and institutional differences. This study aims at exploring the key drivers for reporting heterogeneity in SAH in an international context. To this end country specific effects are accounted for and the objective health measure is concretized distinguishing effects of mental and physical health conditions. Methods We use panel data from the SHARE-project which provides a rich dataset on the elderly European population. To obtain distinct indicators for physical and mental health conditions two indices are constructed. Finally to identify potential reporting heterogeneity in SAH a generalized ordered probit model is estimated. Results We find evidence that in addition to health behaviour health care utilization mental and physical health condition as well as country characteristics affect reporting behaviour. We conclude that observed and unobserved heterogeneity play an important role when analysing SAH and have to be taken into account. Keywords Reporting heterogeneity SHARE Generalized ordered probit Background Knowledge about the health status of individuals is paramount when health interventions are to be evaluated. Often self-assessed health SAH is used as a key measure to this end. However SAH is prone to inaccuracies due to reporting heterogeneity. Given an identical