Health Transitions among Older Adults in Mexico: A Couples Approach

Rebeca Wong, University of Maryland
Alberto Palloni, University of Wisconsin at Madison

The paper examines the socioeconomic, demographic and life style determinants of two-year health transitions among adults aged 50 or older in Mexico. We use data from the National Mexican Health and Aging Study waves 2001 and 2003. The outcome variable in this paper is the two-year change in self-reported health status. We focus on unobserved heterogeneity, that is, the role of latent, unobserved factors such as attitudes or preferences that affect health. We use spouse data to essentially reduce or eliminate the influence of unmeasured covariates that are common to both spouses on the health of each. Comparisons of the results from these models with those from models based on individuals provide indications about the biases introduced by unobserved heterogeneity in models of determinants of health.