Baby Boomers VS other generations: ageing process and health.

The aim of the research is to compare health status outcomes among Italian generations. We focus in identifying if subsequent birth cohorts reach different health status according to their alternatives lifestyles and socio-economic conditions. Our hypothesis is that younger generations present lower health status outcomes, being age equal, due to worse lifestyles and socio-economic status, in particular in terms of working conditions. The results could have important implications on public policy choices: as they are getting old, Baby Boomers will require higher healthcare expenses but there is no evidence that their health status will be worse than the one of younger generations. Indeed, the public expenses may be even higher for younger cohorts which are less numerous but probably disadvantage in terms of health status. The increasing weight of the elderly on the entire population is a phenomenon called “process of population ageing”. EUROSTAT in 2015 described a region with the most rapid aging process in the world. Individuals are leaving longer as life expectancy has increased and fertility rate has decreased. The old-age dependency ratio, which compares the segment of population generally economically inactive due to older age (over65) with the group of people in working age (15-64 years old), reached 28.1% in 2014. Within the European context, Italy reaches the peak of old-age dependency ratio (32.9% in 2014), determining a particularly high burden on the working age population as confirmed by ISTAT. In recent years, researchers begin to study the impact of demographic transition on the economic and social context by grouping the population into “birth cohorts”. This term refers to population groups of people characterized by the same age approximately and have grown up during the same time span with the same key societal experiences. For the scope of our analysis we applied the definition proposed by ISTAT in 2016, which identifies: Generation 0 (1926-1945), Baby Boom 1 (1946-1955), Baby Boom 2 (1956-1965), Generation X (1966-1980), Millennials (1981-1995), iGeneration (1996-2015). The empirical analysis is implemented on data collected by ISTAT from 1993 to 2012 through the survey “Aspects of Daily Living”. The underlying hypothesis is that different people birth and grown up at successive time periods adopt different lifestyles; entering the household production function they could determine alternatives health outcomes. Common beliefs suggest that Baby Boomers are healthier than previous generations due to increased education, higher income and lower smoking rates; but also better off successive generations which have encountered fewer job security and worse lifestyle habits. The previous literature is controversial on the results. Badley et al. analyzed the difference in health across Canadian generations considering education, income, smoking rate, body mass index (BMI) as main determinants. His results showed that younger generations (Generation X) in comparison to Baby Boomers did not present a better health status because the positive effects due to increasing education and income levels and reducing smoking prevalence were perfectly counterbalanced by the adverse effect of the rise in obesity (BMI). He cannot confirm the assumption that Baby Boomers will require less healthcare when elderly. Looking at EU, the research implemented by Portrait in 2002 on a sample from the Netherlands shows a poor cohort effect. Instead, they isolate a prevalent period effect connected to the year of measurement. It can be explained by a uniform decrease in availability of healthcare services. The theoretical framework is built on the Grossman’s Theory of the demand for health 1972. The analysis proceeds by disentangling age, period and cohort effects (APC models) and verifying if there exists any intergenerational inequality between cohorts. The data elaboration is run using the statistical software STATA 14.