Table 1. Sample characteristics (proportions) for the unbalanced and balanced panel.

Variable	Unbalanced panel	Balanced panel
Cervical screening in t	0.209	0.204
Cervical screening in t-1	0.211	0.213
Cervical screening in t-2	0.219	0.222
Cervical screening in t-3	0.227	0.231
Total HH annual income (mean/sd)	2.990/1.877	3.120/1.853
Living with partner	0.626	0.732
Age between 16 and 24	0.090	0.009
Age between 25 and 49	0.426	0.447
Age between 50 and 64	0.228	0.293
Age 65 and older	0.256	0.251
Moved residence within UK	0.073	0.047
Number of children in household (mean/sd)	0.556/0.946	0.522/0.913
Existence of children in HH aged 0–4	0.089	0.080
Primary education (ISCED)	0.264	0.247
Secondary education (ISCED)	0.429	0.432
Tertiary education (ISCED)	0.307	0.321
Employed part-time or full-time	0.530	0.524
GP visit during last 12 months	0.816	0.810
Subjective Wellbeing (GHQ) (mean/sd)	2.132/3.155	1.972/3.085
Health status: self rated poor	0.109	0.0904
Smoker	0.207	0.166
Region England	0.862	0.869
Region Scotland	0.081	0.079
Region Wales	0.057	0.052
Living in a rural area	0.116	0.138
Ethnic non-white	0.0187	0.0105
Cervical screening policy change	0.0924	0.110
Average health status self rated (mean/sd)	2.260/0.673	2.222/0.656
Average total HH annual income (mean/sd)	2.931/1.449)	3.062/1.408

Source: BHPS waves 1–18.

The unbalanced panel consists of 33,075 observations from 3,758 women and the balanced panel consists of 11,998 observations from 857 women.