Health Probabilities Matched to Health and Retirement Study

In this site, you can find the individual probabilities of belonging to each health group from "Endogenous Health Groups and Heterogenous Dynamics of the Elderly" by Dante Amengual, Jesús Bueren, and Julio A. Crego matched to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).

You can download four different stata files:

• probabilities2.dta
• probabilities3.dta
• probabilities4.dta
• probabilities5.dta

In each .dta file the unit of observation is an individual. Each individual is uniquely identified into a single ID variable "hhidpn" for each individual in the HRS interviewed between waves 3 and 12. "hhidpn" coincides with the ID variable used in the original HRS files.

We follow the same variable naming convention as in the HRS. The first character indicates that the variable refers to the reference person ("R").The second character indicates the wave to which the variable pertains: "3," "4," "5," "6," "7," "8," "9," "10," "11," or "12".

Variables may contain missing values for two reasons: the Reference person was aged less than 60 in a given wave, or because the Reference person died in a previous wave.

In the paper, we show that using the individual health classification with the highest probability outperforms existing measures of health used in the literature at explaining entry in nursing homes, home health care, out-of-pocket medical expenses and mortality.

probabilities2.dta: Contains the probabilities when the number of groups is set to two

• Rwhealthy is the respondent's probabilities of being healthy
• Rwimpaired is the respondent's probabilities of being impaired.

probabilities3.dta: Contains the probabilities when the number of groups is set to three

• Rwhealthy is the respondent's probabilities of being healthy
• Rwphysical is the respondent's probabilities of being physically frail.
• Rwimpaired is the respondent's probabilities of being impaired.

probabilities4.dta: Contains the probabilities when the number of groups is set to four

• Rwhealthy is the respondent's probabilities of being healthy
• Rwphysical is the respondent's probabilities of being physically frail.
• Rwmental is the respondent's probabilities of being mentally frail.
• Rwimpaired is the respondent's probabilities of being impaired.

probabilities5.dta: Contains the probabilities when the number of groups is set to four

• Rwhealthy is the respondent's probabilities of being healthy
• Rwmapis the respondent's probabilities of being in group map
• Rwphysical is the respondent's probabilities of being physically frail.
• Rwmental is the respondent's probabilities of being mentally frail.
• Rwimpaired is the respondent's probabilities of being impaired.