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The Cost of Ill Health
- Appendix B

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Appendix B

Appendix Table B1 – Health-related SoFIE variables used
Variable name	Variable categories	Notes
Self-rated health	Excellent Very good Good Fair Poor	–
Physical health-related productivity questions	During the last 4 weeks, as a result of your physical health: how often did you cut down on the amount of time you spent on your usual daily activities? how often did you get less done than you would like? how often were you limited in the type of activities you could do? how often did you have difficulty doing your usual daily activities, for example, it took extra effort?	Response choices: All of the time Most of the time Some of the time A little of the time None of the time
Mental health-related productivity questions	During the past 4 weeks, as a result of any emotional problems such as feeling depressed or anxious: how often did you cut down on the amount of time you spent on your usual daily activities? how often did you get less done than you would like? how often did you do your usual activities less carefully than usual?	Response choices: All of the time Most of the time Some of the time A little of the time None of the time
Activity stopped for one week owing to ill health	Yes No	Based on responses to question “(Other than anything that resulted from an injury) In the last 12 months, did an illness or health problem stop you doing your usual activities for more than a week?”
Smoked	Yes No	Whether a person has ever smoked
Drinks alcohol	Yes No	Whether drank alcohol in last 12 months
Deferred visit to PCP	Yes No	Whether deferred visit to primary care provider in last 12 months owing to affordability
Not collected prescription	Yes No	Whether not collected prescription in last 12 months owing to affordability
Injury	Yes No	Whether had injury lasting more than a week in last 12 months

Appendix Table B2 – NZHIS health-related variables used
Variable name	Variable categories	Notes
Hospital inpatient appointment in reference period (main measure used)	Yes No	Hospital inpatient information does not include records for those whose appointment is less than three hours (outpatients) or information on appointments with primary health care providers such as GPs. It will also not include private hospital treatments; treatments at these facilities are only included if the treatment is publicly funded.
Hospital inpatient appointment in SoFIE interview period (used briefly for comparisons with MoH figures)	Yes No	–
Length of stay for hospital appointments (days)	–	Continuous variable. In the original data this is the number of overnight stays so a day patient would have a length of stay equal to zero. To convert it to length in days one has been added to the original variable. The start and end dates of hospital appointments are altered by a set number of days to prevent disclosure but the length of stay is not affected.
Diagnosis-related Group (DRG)	–	DRG is a system to classify hospital cases into one of approximately 500 groups expected to have similar hospital resource use. DRGs are assigned by a "grouper" program based on ICD diagnoses, procedures, age, sex and the presence of complications or comorbidities. DRGs may be further grouped into Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs).
International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems code (ICD code)	–	ICD codes classify diseases and a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances and external causes of injury or disease. Every health condition can be assigned to a unique category and given a code, up to six characters long. Such categories can include a set of similar diseases. Hospital inpatient appointments as a result of ill health are defined as those that are not injury-related or pregnancy-related; that is, ICD codes A00-N99, R00-R94 and Z00-Z99.

Appendix Table B3 – Non-health-related SoFIE variables used
Variable name	Variable categories	Notes
Labour market participation (main measure used)	Participating Not participating	One or more weeks worked in the annual reference period. Voluntary workers, self-employed and casual workers are defined to be participating. If a person is unemployed for all weeks in the reference period they are defined to be not participating.
Labour force participation	Participating Not participating (inactive)	Labour force participation at the household interview date. Voluntary workers, self-employed and casual workers are defined to be participating. Those who are unemployed at the interview date are defined to be not participating.
Annual total hours usually worked	–	This is derived by Statistics New Zealand using the employment spell data.
Student	Yes No	If a respondent is still at school, reported that they were economically inactive as a result of being a student or studied full-time for nine or more months they are classified as students in this analysis.
Gender	Male Female	–
Region of residence	Auckland Waikato Wellington Rest of North Island Canterbury Rest of South Island	–
Born in New Zealand	Yes No	–
Ethnicity	NZ/European Māori Pacific Islander Other	Respondents could report more than one ethnicity. Where this occurred, respondents were assigned to a prioritised ethnicity in this order: Māori, Pacific Islander, Other, NZ/European.
Age at interview date	–	Continuous variable.
Aged 50 and over	Respondent 50 or over Respondent under 50	Age is at the interview date.
Highest qualification	No qualification School qualification Post-school vocational qualification Degree or higher	Some respondents reported a fall in qualification level between waves. Where this occurred the highest level of qualification was taken in later waves.
Studying	No studying undertaken in reference period Some studying undertaken	Each respondent is defined to have undertaken study if they report one month or more in which they have studied full-time or part-time towards a formal qualification in the reference period.
Partner	Working partner Non-working partner Single	–
Children	No dependent children Child(ren) minimum age <5 Child(ren) minimum age 5-17	A dependent child is one who is under 18 years and not in full-time employment.
Family economic type	One person with no dependent child(ren) One person with dependent child(ren) Couple with no dependent child(ren) Couple with dependent child(ren)	A dependent child is one who is under 18 years and not in full-time employment.
Number of years in employment	–	Variable to note number of years in paid employment. Derived from the number of weeks in paid employment in the wave and the number of years reported to be in paid work before the first interview (this is assumed to be before the beginning of the annual reference period). If a respondent has at least one week in paid employment in the wave they are counted as having an additional year in paid employment.
Log household income less personal income	–	Continuous variable which is the log of the consumer price adjusted household income less the consumer price adjusted personal income. Personal income is removed owing to its correlation with labour force participation. There was a small number of respondents with negative personal/household income. This is possible if self-employment income is negative. As the number with negative income was very small these were imputed to be zero. One was added to all values to enable logs to be taken. Income was not adjusted to reflect family size/composition.

Appendix Table B4 – Non-SoFIE variables used
Source	Variable name	Variable categories	Notes
Household Labour Force Survey	Unemployment rate	–	Variable to denote national unemployment rate at the month of the household interview given the continuous interviewing method used in SoFIE.

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