Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120

 

Presentation

The Contribution of Social Participation to Health Status An International Comparison of Europeans Aged Fifty and Over

Authors: Nicolas Sirven (Institut de Recherche et Documentation en Economie de la Santé); Thierry Debrand (Institut de Recherche et Documentation en Economie de la Santé)

Presenter: Thierry Debrand (Research and Information Institute for Health Economics (IRDES))

Session: Poster Session

Room: Kirby Winter Garden

When: Monday 2:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.

A growing body of academic literature challenges the idea that the link between social participation (involvement in social activities) and health is well established, although some statistical evidence suggests that a robust positive relationship might exist for the elderly. One reason could be that non-working elders have more time to allow to take part in social activities; so that such involvement in voluntary associations contributes to maintain network size for social and emotional support; and to preserve individuals' cognitive capacities. Using data from the SHARE project for Europeans aged fifty and over in 2004, this study proposes to test for these hypothesis by evaluating the contribution of social participation to self-rated health (SRH) in eleven countries. Estimations of national levels of SRH (after controlling for age, education, income and household composition) are simulated for the whole sample (N=17,966), and for individuals who do and for those who do not take part in social activities (with correction for selection bias in these two cases). Our results suggest that social participation increases the share of individuals reporting good or very good health by 0.03 on average in Europe. The study also indicates that some countries may significantly improve their ranking in health status if a greater part of the population goup aged fifty and over takes part in voluntary associations.