AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF HEALTH STATUS

EZE, Pius C. and Uwakwe, Queendaline C. (2015) AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF HEALTH STATUS. ESUT Journal of Accountancy, 6 (2). pp. 158-163.

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Abstract

A problem facing health economics is how to measure health, given that health is a latent variable, not directly observable or directly measurable, For many public and private health decisions, the health economics literature recognizes that best measures of health status are morbidity measures that indicate how ill people are. This general recognition of the superiority of morbidity measures contradicts the relevant Nigerian literature which seems to prefer mortality rates as measures of health status (possibly due to measurement or data difficulties). This paper presents an empirical method of measuring of health status from the types of survey data available to economists. The basic idea is to conceptualize health terms of illness. The level of a person's health (or health status) can be measured in terms of the severity of the person's illness which is ascertainable empirically. 'Aggregate .severity' can then he obtained to measure population health status. Conceptually, the severity of a person's illness is obtained by comparing the person's level of health when sick with the same person's level of health when healthy. This paper uses household survey data from the United States to illustrate the empirical method.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Management and Social Sciences
Depositing User: mrs chioma hannah
Date Deposited: 10 May 2019 14:10
Last Modified: 10 May 2019 14:10
URI: http://eprints.gouni.edu.ng/id/eprint/1503

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