USE OF CENSUS-BASED AGGREGATE VARIABLES TO PROXY FOR SOCIOECONOMIC GROUP - EVIDENCE FROM NATIONAL SAMPLES

Citation
At. Geronimus et J. Bound, USE OF CENSUS-BASED AGGREGATE VARIABLES TO PROXY FOR SOCIOECONOMIC GROUP - EVIDENCE FROM NATIONAL SAMPLES, American journal of epidemiology, 148(5), 1998, pp. 475-486
Citations number
32
Categorie Soggetti
Public, Environmental & Occupation Heath
ISSN journal
00029262
Volume
148
Issue
5
Year of publication
1998
Pages
475 - 486
Database
ISI
SICI code
0002-9262(1998)148:5<475:UOCAVT>2.0.ZU;2-6
Abstract
Increasingly, investigators append census-based socioeconomic characte ristics of residential areas to individual records to address the prob lem of inadequate socioeconomic information on health data sets. Littl e empirical attention has been given to the validity of this approach. The authors estimate health outcome equations using samples from nati onally representative data sets linked to census data, They investigat e whether statistical power is sensitive to the timing of census data collection or to the level of aggregation of the census data; whether different census items are conceptually distinct; and whether the use of multiple aggregate measures in health outcome equations improves pr ediction compared with a single aggregate measure. The authors find li ttle difference in estimates when using 1970 compared with 1980 US Bur eau of the Census data or zip code compared with tract level variables . However, aggregate variables are highly multicollinear, Associations of health outcomes with aggregate measures are substantially weaker t han with microlevel measures. The authors conclude that aggregate meas ures can not be interpreted as if they were microlevel variables nor s hould a specific aggregate measure be interpreted to represent the eff ects of what it is labeled.