| Summary: | 博士 === 亞洲大學 === 健康產業管理學系健康管理組 === 106 === Population aging has been portrayed as a triumphant gain to the society. However, as the burden of caring for an aging population increases, it also constitutes a looming challenge to the society’s long-term care and healthcare systems. When the life expectancy is prolonged, two possible population health transitions will follow: Compression or Expansion of morbidity. In the case of Taiwan, both previous studies and the soaring National Health Insurance expenditure seem to point to the Expansion of morbidity. We use data from a national representative survey to examine eight-year mortality of incident cases of 3 chronic disease (hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes) in 1993, 1996 and 1999, in order to gain a better understand the health transitions among the elderly in Taiwan.
Data were taken from the Taiwan Longitudinal Survey on Aging (TLSA), which was launched in 1989. A total of 446 incident cases of hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes were identified in 1993 and the numbers of incident cases of the 3 diseases in1996 and 1999 were 327 and 589 respectively. For the incident cases in 1993, we followed their survival status through the end of 2001. For the 1996 and 1999 incident cases, they were followed through the end of 2004 and 2007. Cox Regression models were used to analyze the data and demographic variables and other health variables were taken into control in the models.
The results show that, comparing to the incident cases of the 3 diseases in 1993, incident cases in 1999 were less likely to die (Hazard ratio = .71, p< .05) over an 8-year follow-up period. In other words, Taiwanese elders who contracted the 3 diseases later in time survived longer. Our findings seem to be consistent with an expansion of morbidity among the elderly in Taiwan, at least between the 1990s and 2000s.
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