Dynamics of economic well-being and health in a rapidly-aging society: the case of Mexico

描述(由申请人提供)：健康和经济状况之间的密切关系在我们目前对生活质量差异的了解中起着突出的作用。然而，我们对这一重要关系的了解来自发达国家；更少人知道这些关系是否具有普遍性，或者这些力量如何在贫穷的发展中社会发挥作用，在这些社会中，制度安全网稀缺或根本不存在。在这项拟议的工作中，我们的目标是确定健康的各个方面如何影响快速老龄化国家墨西哥不同群体的经济福祉。拟议的项目有以下具体目标：1)按不同年龄组确定墨西哥老年经济福祉的来源及其在时间上的变化。我们考察了劳动收入、养老金、家庭支持和机构援助对老年人经济福祉的相对重要性。2)评估健康对现有安全网所界定的不同群体的经济福祉的影响程度。我们的总体假设是，那些安全网选择较少的人将显示出从健康到经济福祉的更强联系。我们使用纵向数据，并使用收入和财富等经济结果来衡量包括慢性病、功能和认知能力在内的各种健康维度如何影响后来的经济福祉。拟议的R03项目需要使用描述性和多变量纵向数据技术进行二次数据分析。这些数据来自墨西哥健康和老龄化研究，这是一项对墨西哥50岁及以上成年人的纵向调查，与美国健康和退休研究具有很高的可比性。我们通过涵盖2001-2012年期间的三波研究，按年龄队列和时间变化来检验差异，这三波研究跨越了墨西哥发生的重要结构和社会变化，例如向全民医疗保险的转变。这项研究的结果将有助于为一个快速老龄化的发展中国家建立长期健康和经济关系模型的后续工作，并有助于在全球范围内了解老年福利差距的来源。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The close relation between health and economic status plays a prominent role in our current knowledge of disparities in quality of life over the lfe course. However, what we know about this important association comes from developed countries; much less is known about whether these relations are universal or how these forces work in poor, developing societies in which institutional safety nets are scarce or non-existent. I this proposed work, our goal is to identify how various dimensions of health affect economic well being for different groups in a rapidly aging country, Mexico. The proposed project has the following specific aims: 1) Identify the sources of economic wellbeing in old age in Mexico by different age cohorts and their changes in time. We examine the relative importance of labor earnings, pensions, family support and institutional aid towards economic wellbeing among older adults. 2) Assess the extent to which health impacts economic well-being among various groups defined by the safety nets available to them. Our over-arching hypothesis is that those with fewer safety net options will exhibit a stronger link from health to economic well-being. We use longitudinal data and measure how a variety of health dimensions including chronic disease, functionality, and cognitive ability affect later economic wellbeing using economic outcomes such as income and wealth. The proposed R03 project entails secondary data analysis using descriptive and multivariate longitudinal data techniques. The data comes from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, a longitudinal survey of adults aged 50 and over in Mexico, and highly comparable to the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. We examine differences by age cohorts, and time changes through three waves of the study covering the period 2001-2012, which spans over important structural and social changes occurred in Mexico, such as a move towards universal health insurance. The results of this study will contribute to subsequent work to build a model of long term health and economic relations for a rapidly-aging developing country, and contribute to understanding globally the sources of disparities in old-age well-being.