I feel good! Gender differences and reporting heterogeneity in self-assessed health

Christian Pfarr, Brit S. Schneider, Udo Schneider () and Volker Ulrich

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: For empirical analysis and policy-oriented recommendation, the precise measurement of individual health or well-being is essential. The problem with variables based on questionnaires such as self-assessed health is that the answer may depend on individual reporting behaviour. Moreover, if individual‟s health perception varies with certain attitudes of the respondent reporting heterogenei-ty may lead to index or cut-point shifts of the health distribution, causing estimation problems. We analyse the reporting behaviour of individuals on their self-assessed health status, a five-point categorical variable. We explore observed heterogeneity in categorical variables and include unob-served individual heterogeneity using German panel data. Estimation results show different im-pacts of socioeconomic and health related variables on the five subscales of self-assessed health. Moreover, the answering behaviour varies between female and male respondents, pointing to gen-der specific perception and assessment of diseases. Reporting behaviour on self-assessed health questions in surveys is problematic due to a possible heterogeneity. Hence, in case of reporting heterogeneity, using self-assessed measures in empirical studies may be misleading or at least ambiguous.

Keywords: reporting heterogeneity; generalized ordered probit; self-assessed health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-08-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: I feel good! Gender differences and reporting heterogeneity in self-assessed health (2012)
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