Self-Reported Health among Older Bangladeshis: How Good a Health Indicator Is It?

Omar Rahman, Harvard University
Arthur J. Barsky, Harvard Medical School

Logistic regression methods with adjustments for multi-stage sampling are used to examine the factors associated with self reported health (SRH) in 2921 men and women ages 50 and over in rural Bangladesh. The results indicate that SRH incorporates multiple dimensions of health status, severity, co-morbidity, and trajectory in a similar fashion for both men and women and for different age groups. Older individuals are more likely to report poor SRH than their younger counterparts, and women report significantly worse SRH than their male peers at each age group. In both cases, this disadvantage can be fully accounted for by differences in measured physical performance, ADL limitations, chronic and acute morbidity. Moreover there appear to age independent norms of the relationship between measured physical performance and self reported health.