The Risk of Being Sick: Morbidity Trends in Four Countries

Death rates have declined in developed countries for more than a century, and the risk of dying while sick has also declined. But the prevalance of sickness has increased. Health surveys in Japan, the United States, Britain, and Hungary indicate that the prevalence of sickness at each age moves in a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Population and development review 1990-09, Vol.16 (3), p.403-432
Main Author: Riley, James C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chronic diseases
Comparative Study
Crosscultural Analysis
Death
Death Rate
Diabetes
Diseases
Epidemiology
Great Britain
Health Care
Health surveys
Hungary
Japan
Morbidity
Mortality
Mortality Rates
Notifiable diseases
Public health
Rates of change
Statistics
United States
United States of America
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Summary:Death rates have declined in developed countries for more than a century, and the risk of dying while sick has also declined. But the prevalance of sickness has increased. Health surveys in Japan, the United States, Britain, and Hungary indicate that the prevalence of sickness at each age moves in a direction opposite to the risk of death at each age. In the first three countries, where death rates have declined, the proportion of people reporting health problems and restricting ordinary activities because of health has increased. In Hungary death rates have increased and the proportion of people reporting chronic illness has decreased. Some explanations for the increase in sickness rates refer to subjective changes in the evaluation of health experience that show up as a lower threshold for distinguishing health from ill health. Other explanations--prolongation of the average course of maladies, insult substitution, and the effects of mortality decline--refer to objective factors accounting for additional time spent in ill health. The article reviews arguments offered for each explanation and stresses the role of objective factors in increasing sickness time.
ISSN:0098-7921
1728-4457
DOI:10.2307/1972830