Reconceptualizing Health as Wellness among Older Adults: Conditions, Constellations and Social Risk Factors from a Nationally Representative Probability Sample of Men and Women 57 to 85 Years of Age

Edward O. Laumann, University of Chicago
Linda Waite, University of Chicago
Aniruddha Das, University of Chicago
Martha McClintock, University of Chicago

This study explores the social distribution and etiology of health constellations in the general population, using data from the 2005-2006 U.S. National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative probability sample of 3,005 community-dwelling women and men ages 57-85. Each constellation is characterized by a profile of conditions from multiple domains of health, with the list of indicators including self reports as well as a uniquely wide range of objective biomeasures. Latent class analysis is used to extract 14 underlying configurations from these observed data. In addition, survey-weighted multinomial logit models are used to estimate the social-structural correlates of these latent health constellations.