Socioeconomic Success and Health in Later Life: Some Evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Surveys

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

The paper looks at the inter-relationships between education, income and wealth and health with a particular emphasis on the health of the elderly, using data from four waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), IFLS1 (1993), IFLS2 (1997), IFLS3 (2000), and the new IFLS4 (2007). Using longitudinal data allows us to incorporate some dynamics into our analysis of the two-way relationship between socioeconomic success and health. The approach helps us avoid many difficulties faced by studies that rely only on contemporaneous associations. We explore the relationships between socioeconomic 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 both subjective measures and biomarkers including general health status, nurse-reported health status, activities of daily living (ADL and IADL), the short CES-D measure of depression, hemoglobin levels, body mass index, waist circumference, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.