title: A Note on the Dependence of Health on Age and Education.
abstract: When investigating relationships between education and health, one has to take age into account. Conditioning on age entails conditioning on surviving, which has been argued to lead to a potential selection bias. In this note, I argue that surviving should be considered as a necessary precondition for the relationships of interest and, therefore, not as a possible source of bias. I criticize models of health trajectories that do not condition on surviving.
authors.affiliation: Social Science Methodology and Social Statistics, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstrassen 150, D-44780, Bochum, Germany. goetz.rohwer@rub.de.
authors.forename: Götz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rohwer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015983:Selection Bias; D016019:Survival Analysis
keywords: Age trajectories of health; Growth curve modeling; Hierarchical models; Mortality selection