Socio-economic success and health in later life: some evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Surveys

John Strauss, University of Southern California
Firman Witoelar, World Bank Group
Bondan Supraptilah, SurveyMETER

The paper looks at the inter-relationships between poverty and health with a particular emphasis on the health of the elderly, using data from four waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, IFLS1(1993), IFLS2(1997), IFLS3(2000), and the new IFLS4(2007). Using longitudinal data allow us to incorporate some dynamics into our analysis of the two-way relationships between socio-economic success and health. The approach helps us avoid many difficulties faced by studies that rely only on contemporaneous associations. We explore the relationships between socio-economic variables and health outcomes across four survey waves spanning over 14 years. Recognizing the multi-dimensionality of health, we look at a number of health measures collected in the IFLS, including subjective measures such as the self-reported general health status, nurse-reported health status, activities of daily living (ADL/IADL), a version of the CES-D measure of depression, and objective health measures such as hemoglobin levels, body mass indices, and cholesterol levels.