Functioning, Disability and Health among Older Americans: Evidence from the National Health Interview Survey, 1997-2000

Diane S. Shinberg, University of Memphis

The goals of this paper are three-fold: (1) to highlight the measures of functioning, disability and health in the United States’ leading population health survey, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); (2) to examine the levels of function, disability and health among older persons (defined here as age 55 and older) using recent data (1997-2000, and 2001 if available) from the NHIS; and (3) to compare the function, disability and health of elders by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and gender. In examining the health, disability and function (e.g., cognitive limitation, functional difficulties, personal care needs, and bed days) of older non-institutionalized, civilian Americans, I will use a sociomedical framework, like the new International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, for understanding disability as not merely a consequence of disease or a characteristic of an individual but as a product of the interaction between a person and their environment.