TY  - JOUR
AU  - Banks, James
AU  - Oldfield, Zoe
AU  - Smith, James P
TI  - Childhood Health and Differences in Late-Life Health Outcomes Between England and the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17096
PY  - 2011
Y2  - May 2011
DO  - 10.3386/w17096
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17096
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17096.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James Banks
Arthur Lewis Building-3.020
School of Social Sciences
The University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom
E-Mail: j.banks@ifs.org.uk

Zoë Oldfield
Institute for Fiscal Studies
7 Ridgemount
London, WC1 7AE  U.K.
E-Mail: zoe_o@ifs.org.uk

James P. Smith
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
Tel: 310-451-6925
E-Mail: jsmith_1776@outlook.com
M1  - published as James Banks, Zoë Oldfield, James P. Smith. "Childhood Health and Differences in Late-Life Health Outcomes between England and the United States," in David A. Wise, editor, "Investigations in the Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (2012)

M3  - presented at "Aging Conference", May 6-7, 2011
AB  - In this paper we examine the link between retrospectively reported measures of childhood health and the prevalence of various major and minor diseases at older ages. Our analysis is based on comparable retrospective questionnaires placed in the Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing - nationally representative surveys of the age 50 plus population in America and England respectively. We show that the origins of poorer adult health among older Americans compared to the English trace right back into the childhood years - the American middle and old-age population report higher rates of specific childhood health conditions than their English counterparts. The transmission into poor health in mid life and older ages of these higher rates of childhood illnesses also appears to be higher in America compared to England. Both factors contribute to higher rates of adult illness in the United States compared to England although even in combination they do not explain the full extent of the country difference in late-life health outcomes. 
ER  -