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Visualizing Health and Well-Being Inequalities Among Older Europeans

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Abstract

In this study, we propose a hyper-simplified indicator of health and well-being for data visualization purposes in large datasets and apply it to SHARE survey data, the largest macro survey on health, ageing and retirement for 18 European countries. The indicator is based on four thematic sub-indicators, each focussing on a particular issue, which are obtained from more than twenty mixed variables measured on more than 60,000 respondents; Next, PCA is used to summarize their information in order to find and visualize profiles of “healthy ageing” across Europe. As a result, EU countries are classified in three groups, that segment the database into the least to the most individuals at risk of health and well-being. The methodology we propose is wide enough to be extended to other surveys or disciplines.

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Notes

  1. PPP is a well-known indicator in economic field, that reflects the real currency value on buying same goods with same currency. It is a way of measuring economic variables among countries without being affected by different exchange rates.

  2. Pearson’s correlation coefficients between WBDI and SPI and between WBDI and WHR are \(-0.59\) and \(-0.88\), respectively, both statistically significant at 5% significance level.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from research project MTM2014-56535-R by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 6 (https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w6.710), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. The SHARE data collection has been funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N\(^o\)211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N\(^o\)227822, SHARE M4: GA N\(^o\)261982) and Horizon 2020 (SHARE-DEV3: GA N\(^o\)676536, SERISS: GA N\(^o\)654221) and by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01-AG09740-13S2, P01-AG005842, P01-AG08291, P30-AG12815, R21-AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG-BSR06-11, OGHA-04-064, HHSN271201300071C) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org).

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  1. Statistics Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, C/Madrid 126, 28903, Getafe, Spain

    Aurea Grané, Irene Albarrán & Qi Guo

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Grané, A., Albarrán, I. & Guo, Q. Visualizing Health and Well-Being Inequalities Among Older Europeans. Soc Indic Res 155, 479–503 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02621-x

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