Health-promotion Activities and Health Status

Abstract

In this study, through a non-linear estimation of system of equations, we examine the effects of various factors that promote health-related activities in individuals, and how these activities affect their health. In particular, we pay special attention to time preference and risk aversion of individuals in health-promotion activities (eating balanced meals, regular physical activities, moderate use of tobacco, and adequate sleep). In addition, as individuals can perform several health-promotion activities simultaneously, we took account of the correlation among these activities. Furthermore we accounted for the effect of unobserved factors that simultaneously influence both an individual’s health-promotion decisions and his/her health status in individual’s health equation.
The data used in this study comes from an original survey we have conducted in Japan. Our empirical investigation shows that the error terms of health-promotion equations have a significantly positive correlation between themselves, and hence it is important to take into account the correlation among health-promotion decisions simultaneously. Even after controlling for this correlation, we have found that health-promotion activities, particularly getting adequate amount of sleep or rest, have a positive impact on health status.