HEALTH AND AGING DYNAMICS IN A LOW INCOME POPULATION

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Research on the dynamics of health and well-being among economically disadvantaged elderly persons will be significantly enhanced by the fielding of a panel data set including relevant measurements which will be prepared for public release. We will design and field a 5,000 household resurvey of poor households headed by or containing an elderly member. This survey will be fielded in 1997 and resurvey households interviewed in the baseline survey in 1993. The fact that the baseline is already in place represents a major savings in the money and time needed to produce a panel data set. Together with the baseline survey, the second wave of data will support research on important dynamic aging processes such as the transition from self-sufficiency to dependency, the decline from robust health to frailty, labor force and earning dynamics, wealth accumulation and decumulation, living arrangements and intergenerational transfers. A particular focus will be the development of a variety of appropriate measures of mental and physical health and of health care utilization. In order to facilitate comparative studies of aging dynamics in poor and non-poor populations, the survey will be purposely designed to complement efforts such as the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) and the Assets and Dynamics (AHEAD). However, on average, survey participants will be considerably more impoverished. The survey will also be designed to take advantage of changes in the provision of social security and health insurance. The baseline and follow-up will straddle an exogenously-introduced expansion of the social safety net available to the working poor.