Economic Status of Middle and Old Age Population in Mexico: Preliminary Results from the Mexican Health and Aging Study

The purpose of the paper is to present a description of the economic variables measured in the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), to provide a first view at the results and the quality of these data, and a preliminary look at the association between income and wealth and main socioeconomic and demographic variables, overall health, availability of retirement pensions, and coverage of health insurance. The paper presents preliminary results based on the MHAS 2001, focusing on the measures of income and net worth. A brief look at non-response is presented, followed by issues of quality of the data, and the association of income and assets with main health outcome variables. We conclude that the economic variables are consistent with external sources of data on income and assets in Mexico, to the extent that comparisons are possible, and that the MHAS provides adequate economic data. In particular the measurement of net worth results encouraging, given that this represents the first attempt to measure net worth in a national Mexican household survey.