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Adjusting for heterogeneous response thresholds in cross-country comparisons of self-reported health

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  • Molina, Teresa
Abstract
Comparisons of subjective scale measures across countries can be distorted by the use of different response thresholds in different countries. Anchoring vignettes are a survey tool designed to address this problem, and are becoming widely used to adjust comparisons of subjective measures across groups, primarily within countries or across relatively similar high-income countries. This paper expands the existing literature by comparing six domains of self-reported health across the United States, England, and two countries with very different income levels, cultures, and geographic locations – Indonesia and China. In the raw data, respondents from the U.S. and England appear to be in worse health than their Indonesian and Chinese counterparts, but across the majority of health domains, this relationship completely reverses once I account for threshold differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Molina, Teresa, 2017. "Adjusting for heterogeneous response thresholds in cross-country comparisons of self-reported health," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 1-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joecag:v:10:y:2017:i:c:p:1-20
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeoa.2017.08.002
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    Cited by:

    1. Raskina, Yulia & Podkorytova, Olga & Kuchakov, Ruslan, 2022. "Health determinants and the reporting heterogeneity bias in Russia: Anchoring vignettes approach," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 66, pages 118-143.
    2. Silver, Michelle Pannor & Dass, Adrian Rohit & Laporte, Audrey, 2020. "The effect of post-retirement employment on health," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    3. Leonard Goff, 2022. "Causal identification with subjective outcomes," Papers 2212.14622, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    4. Teresa Molina, 2016. "Reporting Heterogeneity and Health Disparities Across Gender and Education Levels: Evidence From Four Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(2), pages 295-323, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Self-reported health; Anchoring vignettes; Aging surveys;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development

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