Modelling the dynamics of health and death among the British elderly

Abstract

The development of preventive health strategies for the elderly has been hampered by the view that most modifiable risk factors have already had their full effects by the time individuals reach old age. To gain some insight into the processes governing health changes in older age-groups, new statistical techniques for multivariate stochastic analysis are developed and applied to data on elderly men and women from the 1991-1995 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. Contrary to popular belief, the results suggest that broadly-based preventive strategies aimed at social, socioeconomic and behavioural risk factors may have an important role to play in preventing or delaying chronic disease in the non-institutionalised elderly population.