Individual evidence of independence in health profiles evaluation

Resum

We analyze empirically the fulfillment of the property of Mutual Independence, traditionally assumed in the literature on health profiles evaluation. Mutual Independence turns out to be equivalent to the simultaneous fulfillment of two weaker properties: Independence of the Past with regard to the Future and Independence of the Future with regard to the Past. The purpose of this paper is to test if the latter property is better fulfilled than its alternative of Independence of the Past with regard to the Future, and than the stronger one of Mutual Independence. To do so, we propose three different sets of questionnaires, addressed to three groups of people, differing in age. Our main findings are the following: (1) at an aggregate level, Mutual Independence is accurately satisfied, even though there is a higher level of satisfaction of Independence of the future with regard to the past, particularly significant withing the Elderly group; (2) at an individual level, Independence of the future with regard to the past is significantly better fulfilled than the alternative assumption, for every group.