Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter) 1993
Headen, Jr., Alvin E. 1993. "Economic Disability and Health Determinants of the Hazard of Nursing Home Entry." Journal of Human Resources 28(1):80-110.
A Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate economic determinants of the conditional probability of first nursing home entry during a 34-month period for a panel of disabled older persons who resided in the community at the initial survey. Allowing for death that competes with first entry and end-of-survey censoring produced the following results. Wealth significantly reduces the hazard of nursing home entry. The price elasticity of the hazard of nursing home entry is estimated to be -0.7. Also, nursing home entry is positively related to the opportunity cost of informal caregiver time faced by the family.
Alvin E. Headen, Jr., is a professor of economics at North Carolina State University and a the Center for Demographic Studies at Duke University. Versions of this paper were presented at the 198 meetings of the Allied Social Sciences Association, the Duke University Labor and Applied Microeconomics Workshop, The North Carolina State University Industrial Organization Workshop, and the North Carolina Triangle Area Health Economics Workshop. Helpful comments also have been provided by George Myers, Kenneth Manton, Max Woodbury, Eric Stallard, Alastair Hall, Steven Allen, Marjorie McElroy, Robert Clark, Richard Scheffler, and three anonymous referees. Any remaining errors the authors'. Research was supported by National Institute on Aging Grant 5-T32-AG00139. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in May 1993 through May 1996 from the author at the following address: Department of Economic, Box 8110, N.C. State University, Raleigh, N.C. 27695-8110.
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