Emergent Educational Gradients in Health: A Comparison of Self-Reported Morbidities and Objective Biomarker Measures
Bethany Everett, University of Colorado at Boulder
Using data from the fourth wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we pursue two research aims: 1) to document emerging educational gradients in health among a sample of young adults and 2) to examine educational gradients in underreporting of morbidities. We find that educational gradients are more strongly observed using objective measures of hypertension compared to self-reported hypertension. Moreover, we find a strong educational gradient in the underreporting of hypertension. These results are an important contribution both methodologically and theoretically to the literature, and further exploration of objective versus self-reported morbidities will improve both our understanding of perceived health, access to care, and physical health among the U.S. population.
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Presented in Session 122: Methodological Issues in Health and Mortality: Longitudinal studies