Abstract
Self-reported health status is often used as a simple index of healthy aging by researchers. However, respondents’ perceptions about his/her own health may be conditioned by individual and familial (micro-level) characteristics and, at the macro-level level, by social conditions. In this paper, using data from National Sample Survey Office’s surveys on “Morbidity and Health Care” (1995 and 2004), we examine how self-reported health status and the pattern of inconsistencies varies across gender. Given the observed level of gender discrimination in South Asian societies we would expect that actual health status of males will be better than that of females. Social conditioning can, however, mould expectations of women and lower their expectations about desirable health status. This may lead to a situation when perceived health status is better off for women. This hypothesis is tested using bivariate analysis across different socio-economic correlates like education, socio-religious identity, living arrangement and engagement in economic activity, etc. We find that women consistently report better health status than males. Econometric analysis based on a logit model, on the other hand, fails to find any statistically significant difference in self-reported health status across gender. In the next step of our analysis, we examine possible inconsistencies in actual and perceived health status. The former is measured by mobility of respondent and whether he/she is suffering from any ailment. Inconsistencies may arise when (a) the respondent reports any of these problems but perceives him/herself to be in good health, and (b) the respondent reports poor health despite not reporting any of the above indicators. Variations in the inconsistencies across gender are examined and found to vary significantly across gender.
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- 1.
Retrieved from http://www.who.int/healthinfo/survey/ageingdefnolder/en on 1 July 2014.
- 2.
Scheduled castes (SCs) are Hindus belonging by birth to the lowest of the four castes. They were formerly untouchables and, even now, are often economically and socially depressed. Scheduled tribes (STs), on the other hand, are members of economically and socially depressed tribes (which may be non-Hindu also) who were also treated as untouchables. In post-Independence India, Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution provide a list of all SCs and STs under the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, and the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950, respectively, to facilitate affirmative action targeting such social groups. In the 1991, the Government of India introduced another list of castes, apart from SC and STs, who are socially and economically backward. These castes are called Other Backward Castes (OBCs).
- 3.
Zones are defined as follows: North comprises Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh; East comprises West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Orissa; Northeast comprises of Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram; Central comprises Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh; West comprises Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli; South comprises Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
- 4.
In 1995–96 there are negative values in 35 groups in rural areas and 34 groups in urban groups. The corresponding figures for 2004 are 36 and 37, respectively.
- 5.
Extreme response bias is defined as the “tendency to endorse the most extreme response categories in spite of item content” (Baumgartner and Steenkamp 2006).
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Sugata Senroy, Dipankar Coondoo and Bandana Das for their suggestions on the statistical methodology. Tannistha Samanta also provided some useful comments. We are also grateful to participants of the workshop, particularly U.S. Mishra, for their comments on an early draft. Responsibility for any remaining errors lies with the authors.
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Husain, Z., Ghosh, D. (2017). Analysis of Perceived Health Status Among Elderly in India: Gender and Positional Objectivity. In: Samanta, T. (eds) Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Social Gerontology . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1654-7_10
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