Health perception biases and risky health behaviours in China

ABSTRACT

Using data from the 2011 and 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper analyzes the relation between health perception biases and risky health behaviours among adults aged 45 and older. We compare objective health outcomes (including hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes) with perceived conditions to assess absolute health perception biases and hypothesize that the role of biased health perceptions is a potential predictor for risky health behaviours. We provide evidence for the existence of positive absolute health perception biases and further document clear associations between health overconfidence and higher probabilities of alcohol consumption, overweight, and obesity, with the notable exception of smoking.

KEYWORDS:

• Health perception
• health biases
• overconfidence
• risky behaviours

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D11
• I12
• I18

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the National School of Development together with the Institute for Social Science Survey at Peking University for providing the CHARLS data. We also thank the editor Mark Taylor and one anonymous referee for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. All errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

Authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Data Availability Statement

The CHARLS data are available at http://charls.pku.edu.cn/pages/data/111/en.html.

Ethics Statement

The analysis uses secondary data which have no identifying information.

Notes

¹ The CHARLS asks whether the respondent does vigorous, moderate or light PA for at least 10 minutes every week. However, CHARLS only asks these questions to a random subsample of half the entire sample, which results in a large decline in the analytic sample.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 71804142; 72074178) and the Start-Up Fund for Young Talent Support Plan (grant number 113055107001). The funding body had no direct role in the design, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.