Educational Differences in the Compression of Disability Onset in the United States

Chi-Tsun Chiu, Academia Sinica
Mark D. Hayward, University of Texas at Austin
Angelique Chan, National University of Singapore
David Matchar, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore

Studies regarding education as a “fundamental cause” of health disparities have shown that more-educated people enjoy longer life expectancy, mortality compression, later disability onset and disability compression compared with their less-educated counterparts, and this is especially true in the United States. However, it is still unclear whether educational differences in disability and mortality within a population are accompanied by compression of disability onset, that is, a smaller variation in ages of disability onset. This study proposes a hypothetical scenario of compression of disability onset, based on previous literature from the United States, showing that educational differences in disability and mortality within a population are very likely accompanied by compression of disability onset. The Health and Retirement Study will be used and microsimulation and bootstrap techniques will be performed. The compression of disability onset has very important policy implications and substantially influences how social welfare is arranged.