IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/sfb373/200264.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Self-rated and changes in self-rated health as predictors of mortality: First evidence from german panel data

Author

Listed:
  • Schwarze, Johannes
  • Andersen, Hanfried H.
  • Anger, Silke

Abstract

Background: Studies from several countries have shown that self-rated health is an independent predictor of mortality. However, no empirical evidence exists for Germany so far. We investigate the effectiveness of (i) self-ratings of health by individuals and (ii) changes in self-rated health, as predictors of mortality for Germany. Methods: A sub-sample of 3,096 respondents, aged 50 years and over, is drawn from the annual collections of data of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP), between 1994 and 1996. Several probit models are estimated in order to analyse the impact of selfrated health and of changes in self-rated health on predictions of mortality. Results: We find that, while currently self-rated health is shown to be a valid predictor of mortality in Germany, adding previously self-rated health has no effect on explaining the probability of death. Furthermore, one-year changes in self-rated health do not have an additional impact on predicting mortality. Conclusion: Our results for Germany confirm international evidence. In addition, the assumption that self-rated health reflects trajectories and not only the current level of health can be neglected. This leads us to the conclusion that self-rated health reflects a static rather than a dynamic perspective of health. Therefore, when evaluating a population's state of health, it may be sufficient to rely on self-assessments of health at one point of time instead of using panel data.

Suggested Citation

  • Schwarze, Johannes & Andersen, Hanfried H. & Anger, Silke, 2002. "Self-rated and changes in self-rated health as predictors of mortality: First evidence from german panel data," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 2002,64, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:sfb373:200264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/65359/1/727040669.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mortality; Self-Rated Health; Trajectory Hypothesis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:sfb373:200264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfhubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.