Education, Gender, and State-Level Disparities in the Health of Older Indians: Evidence from Biomarker Data

Education, Gender, and State-Level Disparities in the Health of Older Indians: Evidence from Biomarker Data

Economics & Human Biology, Volume 19, December 2015, Pages 145–156

Jinkook Lee, Mark E. McGovern, David E. Bloom, P. Arokiasamy, Arun Risbud, Jennifer O’Brien, Varsha Kale, Peifeng Hu

Abstract

Using new biomarker data from the 2010 pilot round of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), we investigate education, gender, and state-level disparities in health. We find that hemoglobin level, a marker for anemia, is lower for respondents with no schooling (0.7 g/dL less in the adjusted model) compared to those with some formal education and is also lower for females than for males (2.0 g/dL less in the adjusted model). In addition, we find that about one third of respondents in our sample aged 45 or older have high C-reaction protein (CRP) levels (>3 mg/L), an indicator of inflammation and a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. We find no evidence of educational or gender differences in CRP, but there are significant state-level disparities, with Kerala residents exhibiting the lowest CRP levels (a mean of 1.96 mg/L compared to 3.28 mg/L in Rajasthan, the state with the highest CRP). We use the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition approach to explain group-level differences, and find that state-level disparities in CRP are mainly due to heterogeneity in the association of the observed characteristics of respondents with CRP, rather than differences in the distribution of endowments across the sampled state populations.

Keywords: Biomarkers; Health disparities; Cardiovascular health; Anemia; Aging

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X15000660

Hypertension and Happiness

Hypertension and Happiness across Nations

David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald

Journal of Health Economics 27(2): 218-233.

Abstract
In surveys of well-being, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands emerge as particularly happy while nations like Germany and Italy report lower levels of happiness. But are these kinds of findings credible? This paper provides some evidence that the answer is yes. Using data on 16 countries, it shows that happier nations report systematically lower levels of hypertension. As well as potentially validating the differences in measured happiness across nations, this suggests that blood-pressure readings might be valuable as part of a national well-being index. A new ranking of European nations’ GHQ N6 mental-health scores is also given.

Ungated version:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp_828.pdf

An introduction to the structure of biomarker equations

An Introduction to the Structure of Biomarker Equations
David G. Blanchflower
Dartmouth College, Stirling University, IZA,
and National Bureau of Economic Research, USA
blanchflower@dartmouth.edu
Nicholas A. Christakis
Harvard Medical School
christak@hcp.med.harvard.edu
Andrew J. Oswald
University of Warwick and IZA
andrew.oswald@warwick.ac.uk
December 2011


Abstract
Most economists are not familiar with so-called biomarker data. We attempt here to provide an introduction to such data and to describe the econometric structure of simple biomarker equations. We draw upon information on the heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fibrinogen, and C-reactive protein levels of 100,000 adults. We show that it is extremely important to control for fruit and vegetable consumption (more so than is conventionally recognized in health economics). Once that is done, there are income gradients only in heart-rate and C-reactive protein equations, and those gradients are small. Education enters remarkably weakly in these biomarker equations.