Does self-assessed health measure health?

Denise Doiron, Denzil Gwydir Fiebig, Meliyanni Johar, Agne Suziedelyte

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

70 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Despite concerns about reporting biases and interpretation, self-assessed health (SAH) remains the measure of health most used by researchers, in part reflecting its ease of collection and in part the observed correlation between SAH and objective measures of health. Using a unique Australian data set, which consists of survey data linked to administrative individual medical records, we present empirical evidence demonstrating that SAH indeed predicts future health, as measured by hospitalizations, out-of-hospital medical services and prescription drugs. Our large sample size allows very disaggregate analysis and we find that SAH predicts more serious, chronic illnesses better than less serious illnesses. Finally, we compare the predictive power of SAH relative to administrative data and an extensive set of self-reported health measures; SAH does not add to the predictive power of future utilization when the administrative data is included and improves prediction only marginally when the extensive survey-based health measures are included. Clearly there is value in the more extensive survey and administrative health data as well as greater cost of collection.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)180 - 194
Number of pages15
JournalApplied Economics
Volume47
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Cite this