Pursuant to this grant, the researchers will extend earlier work examining patterns in mortality and disability experience related to characteristics such as income, education, marital status, and gender. The researchers will refine the weighting procedures that they have developed in order to use data from the National Mortality Followback Study to examine these issues. In particular, using additional data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, they will develop a procedure to compute a set of weights that will enable them to more accurately estimate relationships between education and longevity. Development of these weights, and further technical adjustments, will enable them to produce significantly more accurate estimates of mortality and disability incidence on the basis of the socioeconomic characteristics of interest.
