Do Functional Health Inequalities Decrease in Old Age?

Abstract

Although the relationship between educational attainment and health is well established, there is disagreement about how this relationship changes across the life course. Some studies have shown that educational health disparities widen in middle age and then start to abate in old age, whereas others have shown that health disparities continue to widen in old age. The author used the 1992-2002 Health and Retirement Study to shed new light on this old debate. Because findings of declining health inequalities in old age are often dismissed as a product of mortality selection and cohort effects, this study primarily aimed to address these claims. The author found that cohort effects and mortality selection do not fully explain shrinking educational disparities in functional health in old age. Further work is needed to explore explanations for diminishing health disparities health in old age.