EXPLAINING HEALTH DECISION-MAKING

了解个人对其健康做出的决定是一个重要因素， 了解不同人口和社会经济群体之间的健康结果差异，以及随着时间的推移健康状况的改善。该提案审查了个人做出的影响其健康的行为决定，并试图解释个体差异的原因。我们的具体目标是：（1）记录和比较不同人口群体的健康行为趋势，并检查人们之间有利和不利健康行为的相关性;（2）开发包含不同决策过程的决策理论模型，并对这些模型的含义进行分类;（3）使用过去40年的时间序列数据和最近的面板数据集，以确定哪些理论与数据相一致。

Understanding the decisions that individuals make about their health is an important ingredient in understanding the differences in health outcomes across demographic and socioeconomic groups, and health improvements over time. This proposal examines behavioral decisions that individuals make affecting their health and attempts to explain the reasons for differences across individuals. Our specific aims are: (1) to document and compare trends in health behaviors across demographic groups, and to examine the correlation of favorable and adverse health behaviors across people; (2) to develop theoretical models of decision-making that incorporate different decision processes, and to catalogue the implications of these models; and (3) to use time series data over the past forty years and recent panel data sets, to determine which theories are consistent with the data.