Self-reported Health of Aged Population in India

Abstract

Lack of health status indicators that can be voluntarily collected for individuals with minimal expenditure of resources is a major limitation to assess the health of elderly population. This has sparked interest in self-reported measures of health status. The present paper extracted the data from SAGE (Study of Global Ageing and Adult Health)Wave-1 India. Data of 6560 individuals of 50 plus age group have been analyzed from Wave-1. Elderly health was assessed based on six domains of health activity. Health assessment by background characteristics shows older persons in higher age group had a higher percentage in reporting bad health and vice-versa, and females report bad health conditions more in comparison with males. Persons belonging to households in higher wealth quintile and having higher education were in good health condition. Multinomial logistic regression shows that with increasing education and income levels, the possibility of experiencing moderate and good health is found to increase considerably. The study concludes that the self-reported health of the elderly population is poor.