Gender Differences in Self-Rated Health: A Matter of Cohort?

• In Event: 499 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Aging in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Gender differences in self-rated health (SRH) have been a primary focus of sociological research for over a decade, yielding mixed results. Inconsistencies in existing findings may be explained by one key factor that has largely been ignored in discussions of gender differences in self-rated health: the confounding of age and cohort effects. This study distinguishes between age and cohort and assesses how cohort effects explain gender differences in SRH using latent growth curve models. Data are drawn from the 1999-2011 waves of the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Results indicate that purported gender differences in SRH may actually be an artifact of cohort. Both the female disadvantage in baseline health and advantage in rate of decline disappear when cohort differences are taken into account. In cohort models, there is only a difference in health between women in men in the earliest cohort, with women reporting poorer SRH. There are no gender differences in the rate of change in SRH over time. Thus, it is not necessarily gender which is associated with worse SRH with age, but rather, different birth cohorts experience different patterns of gender differences in SRH. Income is protective for baseline SRH of women in the earliest cohort, but not protective over time. There are no significant differences by gender and cohort in the impact of education on SRH. The importance of historical timing in the relationship between gender, health, and aging is discussed.

Author

• Nicole Etherington, University of Western Ontario