The Economic Status and Health Status Project

Suzie Carson, Brian Easton

The increasing use of the Household Economic Survey for policy purposes raises issues about the assumptions that are used for transforming the unit records into aggregates that underpin the social policy analysis.

This paper reports upon a Health Research Council-funded project to investigate the relationship between personal health status and economic status (especially location in the household distribution, but also in relation to other measures). The project uses unit records of the Household Economic Survey for 1994/5 –1996/7 years when personal health status was recorded, using both objective and subjective measures. The paper explores some of the processing issues that the analysis is addressing.