Self-Rated Health and Subsequent Health Outcomes: Do the Relationships Extend to a Low Income Setting?

Elizabeth Frankenberg, University of California, Los Angeles
Nathan Jones, RAND

Although a relationship between poor self-reported health status and excess mortality risks has been well-established for industrialized countries, almost no research considers developing countries. We use data from Indonesia to show that in a low-income setting, as in more advantaged parts of the world, individuals who perceive their health to be poor are significantly more likely to die in subsequent follow-up periods than their counterparts who view their health as good. This result characterizes both men and women remains after inclusion of measures of nutritional status, physical functioning, and symptoms of illness. We also address the relationship between self-reported health status and subsequent measures of health status that are less extreme than mortality, including activities of daily living, Body Mass Index, hemoglobin levels, and lung capacity.