RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 What Do Self-Reported, Objective, Measures of Health Measure?
JF Journal of Human Resources
JO J Hum Resour
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 1067
OP 1093
DO 10.3368/jhr.XXXIX.4.1067
VO XXXIX
IS 4
A1 Baker, Michael
A1 Stabile, Mark
A1 Deri, Catherine
YR 2004
UL http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XXXIX/4/1067.abstract
AB Survey reports of the incidence of chronic conditions are considered by many researchers to be more objective, and thus preferable, measures of unobserved health status than self-assessed measures of global well being. In this paper we evaluate this hypothesis by attempting to validate these “objective, self-reported” measures of health. Our analysis makes use of a unique data set that matches a variety of self-reports of health with respondents’ medical records. We find that these measures are subject to considerable response error resulting in large attenuation biases when they are used as explanatory variables.