Health-promotion Activities and Health Status

In this study, we examine what promotes individual's health-related activities and how these activities affect the individual's health status. For this purpose, we use data from an original survey conducted in Japan. We adopt an estimation model which takes into account the following points: the impact of time preference and risk aversion on health-promotion decisions, the correlation among health-promotion activities (eating balanced meals, regular physical activity, moderate or no use of tobacco, and getting enough sleep or adequate rest), and the unobserved factors that influence both an individual's health-promotion decisions and his/her health status simultaneously. This is because, studies have pointed out that the individual rate of time preference plays an important role in health-promotion decisions. In addition, the individual could have several healthy activities simultaneously, and the unobserved heterogeneity included in the self-assessed health status, which we use as an index of health status, may also influence the individual's health-promotion decisions. Our empirical investigation shows that the error terms of health-promotion equations have a positively significant correlation with each other. These results imply that it is important to take into account the correlation among health-promotion decisions simultaneously. Moreover, even after controlling for this correlation, we find that the health-promotion activities, specifically, getting enough sleep or adequate rest, has a positive impact on the individual's health status.