Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine the differences in self-rated health patterns and its factors among elderly Japanese people.
The theory, which was derived Compression of morbidity, explains the differences in the trajectories in deteriorating health among social stratification. Therefore, mixture models for testing the disparity of developmental trajectories using SAS PROC TRAJ was applied to the panel data.
This study employed the National Survey of the Japanese Elderly, from wave I (1987) to wave IV (1996), which was conducted by Michigan University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology. The independent variable was a set of dummy variable of Satisfaction of health and age was used for independent variable. Time dependent covariates are dummy variables of occupational status and marital status.
The results of this analysis are as follow ; 1) Dividing into two groups was adequate in this analysis through the goodness of fit tests. 2) Those groups showed quite different trajectories. one trajectory showed very high health and its rapid decline with age, and another drew low health and run down linearly. The latter was occupied by male and low-educated people. And 3)Both occupational status and marital status have an positive impact for health.
These results show that while the educated and female tend to enjoy good health, but at the end of life, their health declines dramatically, males are obliged to experience in bad shape. This seems to consistent with the social stratification and ‘compression of morbidity’ theory.
