This proposal seeks funding to provide support for the development, enhancement and assembly of a new database from existing data under the Healthy People 2010 initiative. We propose to make available to the research community new health data from three long-running panel studies: the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Using these primary data sources we will recode and aggregate them to create a set of health variables measuring equivalent concepts of health in all three countries. These new health variables will be added to other conceptually equivalent data contained in the Cross-National Equivalence File (CNEF). This rich data file will be of value to researchers who study the relationship between health and soclo-economic factors in the older age population. We will: 1. update all current CNEF equivalized variables for survey years 2000 and 2001 in the BHPS, survey years 2001 and 2002 for the GSOEP, and survey years 1999 and 2001 in the PSID, 2. expand the set of equivalized variables in the CNEF by creating new comparable health variables from the recently enlarged set of self-reported health and health behavior questions in the BHPS, GSOEP, and PSID, and 3. compare the relative health and economic well-being of the older and younger populations in these modern industrialized societies and to show how health varies within and across socio-economic groups in the three countries.
