Figure 10. Preventive Health Checks and Marital Status.

Note: Plotted lines show OLS estimates of the marriage gap in the probability of doing preventive checks. These differential curves are obtained from a regression that is similar to (1) but where the dependent variable is an indicator variable that takes the value of one if the individual did the indicated preventive check in previous years. The following preventive checks are considered: dental check at least once every year; cholesterol check, general physical examination, flu shot, prostate examination, Pap smear, breast examination, and mammography at least once in the last two years. The equation is fitted to data from the MEPS. Control variables include female, black, and college dummies, income, dummies for 0–3, 4–12, and 13–18 year-old children at home, and year of birth dummies, as well as current health, health insurance (public and private insurance dummies) and total health expenditures; regressions also estimate probability curve for singles. Weights are used in the estimation. The horizontal axis indicates age. In estimation, five-year age bins (20–24 through 60–64) are considered. The center point of the bin is represented in the figure. Dotted lines indicate ± two standard errors confidence bands around point estimates, which are Taylor linearized using survey stratification design in the MEPS.