The protective role of family ties on elderly mortality: addressing the bias introduced by the selection of institutionalized population
Most of the literature linking the living conditions of the elderly with their health outcomes refers to the population living in private dwellings, while studies dealing with the topic from a broader perspective, including the population living in institutions, are sparse. This can be ascribed to the fact that nation-wide surveys on health do not generally include the population living in institutions, and to a strong selection of the institutionalised population, which calls for specific techniques to deal with the induced bias in estimators.