Symposium I: Health and Disability

Abstract

The articles in this Symposium use the health and related measures within the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and highlight its potential to characterize the health status of Americans in their sixth decade, define ethnic differences in the prevalence of these health characteristics, and explore the interface between health and economic status in the context of ethnicity and the older worker. Bound, Schoenbaum, and Waidmann (p. 311) address this question: What is the role of health status in black-white differences in labor force participation? Using a different approach to the measurement of health, analyzing it as a multivectored latent variable, they come to the conclusion that health status, age, and marital status, but not ethnic group, are associated with current employment activities. Clark, Callahan, Mungai, and Wolinsky (p. 322), focusing solely on a broad set of health variables, similar in several respects to those used by Wray and Bound et al., ask a somewhat different question: Using a previously specified model, what are the correlates of physical dysfunction in the black HRS sample? A wide variety of diseases, symptoms, hygienic behaviors, and cognitive measures were associated with physical dysfunction, adding new information in this area, as well as on the differences in these measures. The article by Angel and Angel (p. 332) focuses on the Hispanic cohort within the HRS, but uses the health and labor participation data to address an important issue, the relative lack of health insurance among the Hispanic participants, particularly when contrasted to Anglos and blacks. Despite adjustment for a variety of demographic, social, employment and health variables, the ethnic differences are not explained. Although hypotheses are then offered to address this discrepancy, further work is clearly needed to better understand the gap in insurance coverage and its implications for future health status.