Health-related non-response in the the British Household Panel Survey and European Community Household Panel: using inverse-probability-weighted estimators in non-linear models

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

June 1, 2006

Abstract:

The paper considers health-related non-response in the first 11 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and the full eight waves of the European Community Household Panel and explores its consequences for dynamic models of the association between socioeconomic status and self-assessed health. We describe the pattern of health-related non-response that is revealed by the British Household Panel Survey and European Community Household Panel data. We both test and correct for non-response in empirical models of the effect of socioeconomic status on self-assessed health. Descriptive evidence shows that there is health-related non-response in the data, with those in very poor initial health more likely to drop out, and variable addition tests provide evidence of non-response bias in the panel data models of self-reported health. Nevertheless a comparison of estimates—based on the balanced sample, the unbalanced sample and corrected for non-response by using inverse probability weights—shows that, on the whole, there are not substantive differences in the average partial effects of the variables of interest. The main differences are between unweighted and one form of inverse-probability-weighted estimates for the average partial effects of income and education in those countries that have fewer than eight waves of data. Similar findings have been reported concerning the limited influence of non-response bias in models of various labour market outcomes; we discuss possible explanations for our results.

Published in

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A (Statistics in Society)

Volume

Volume: 169 (3):543-569

Subjects

#508146

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest