SAGE Wave 1: Vignette-Adjusted Health State and Objective Health Measures in Six Low and Middle Income Countries

Somnath Chatterji, World Health Organization (WHO)
Paul Kowal, World Health Organization (WHO)
Emese Verdes, World Health Organization (WHO)

The World Health Organization, with support from the US National Institute on Aging, has created a longitudinal data collection platform to generate cross-nationally comparable health data in lower and middle income countries. The Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) Wave 1 collected health, well-being and biomarker data in over 45,000 older adults (aged 50+ years), and a comparative sample of younger adults (aged 18-49 years), in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, the Russian Federation and South Africa between 2007-10. This will be the first public presentation of pooled data. The relationship between self-reported health state, vignette results and performance measures in three domains (grip strength, timed walk and cognitive function) are presented. Initial analyses suggest a correlation between the vignette-adjusted health score and each performance test, but curiously not significantly different by age. The presence of depression, however, does create systematic reporting biases in health by age and education levels.