The Effect of Educational Differentials on Mortality of the Elderly in Taiwan
摘要
Objectives: To study the effect of educational differentials on mortality of the elderly in Taiwan. Methods: Our research uses five waves of surveys of health and living status of the elderly conducted from 1989-2003 in Taiwan to investigate the trend of effect of education on elderly mortality. Exogenous factors (education and other demographic characteristics) were included in Model 1. The other 3 models are with each adding one, two or three mediating factors (health status, health behaviors and social relationships) from Model 1. Both exogenous and mediating factors were included in Model 4. The 4 models present information of the decomposition of the effect of education on the mortality of older Taiwanese from 1989 to 2003. This study exclude those death cases due to accident which is not related to education and adopt Cox-frailty proportional hazard model which accounts for heterogeneity caused by some other unidentified factors related to the effect of social dynamic on old-age mortality. Results: Without considering the three mediate factors, there is a 13.7% reduction on mortality pre year education increased. On the other hand, it turns out the effect of education on the mortality is insignificant when the three mediate factors are included in the model. The hazard ratio reduced 6.1% on mortality with a 1-year increase in education. Conclusions: The effect of education on the mortality of the elderly is by means of the 3 mediating factors, particularly health status. Besides, no matter health related factors are in the model or not, demographics characteristics show strong relationship with the mortality of the elderly.