Università degli Studi di Palermo, Edificio 13, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
J Health Econ. 2019 May;65:31-42. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.02.004. Epub 2019 Feb 28.
This paper investigates the relationship between self-reported health and material hardship among older Americans. Differently from income-based measures, material hardship provides a more specific description of the concrete adversities faced by the elderly. We have used the last six waves of the Health and Retirement Study to explore the relative contributions of state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and time-specific shocks on reporting poor health, experiencing food insecurity and medication cutbacks. We have used a Latent Markov model to estimate a multivariate non-linear system of equations for panel data allowing time-varying unobserved heterogeneity. Our results reveal a high state dependence of both health and material hardship conditions. Estimated trajectories reveal that pathways of material hardship are associated differently with health. Material hardship is also spread across its dimensions.
本研究旨在探讨美国老年人自报健康状况与物质困难之间的关系。与基于收入的衡量标准不同，物质困难更具体地描述了老年人所面临的实际困境。我们利用健康与退休研究的最后六轮数据，探讨了状态依存性、未观测异质性和特定时期冲击对报告健康状况不佳、食物无保障和减少用药的相对贡献。我们使用潜在马尔可夫模型来估计面板数据的多维非线性方程组，允许时变未观测异质性。我们的研究结果表明，健康和物质困难状况存在高度的状态依存性。估计轨迹表明，物质困难的路径与健康状况的关联方式不同。物质困难也存在于多个维度。
