Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel

In addition, OECD also publishes perceived health status from Lithuania that is not an OECD member.

There could be slight variations in the phrasing of options as in the cases of Japan and Mexico (for instance "regular" instead of "fair").

Differences may also be found in the minimum age of the sample population, however they are relatively negligible. In some of the countries, subjects are 15 and over, and in others the minimum age is 16. In Israel, the survey is administered to people over 20.

Alternatively, the subject may say his condition is unclear to him or refuse to answer.

BLI 2016 is based mainly on data from 2013.

The index also includes three non-OECD countries: Brazil, South Africa and Russia.

This calculation is based on OECD health data for 2013, which unlike BLI, do not include Brazil, South Africa and Russia, non-OECD members. Mexico is a member, but for an unclear reason it only sends the OECD the positive category data and therefore is also not included in the alternative rating I created. Hence my calculation includes 34 countries instead of 38.

Although caution should be exercised when comparing different surveys with different methodologies, indication of that can be found in the European Social Survey (ESS) which includes Israel. ESS is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted across Europe since 2001 every two years. The survey includes a question of subjective general health with the same five-option scale recommended by the OECD. Israel's aggregated proportion of positive responses (good / very good) in this survey reached 74% in 2012 and 72.4% in 2014 compared with 83.5% and 84.3% in the CBS social survey respectively. Further information on ESS can be found in the survey's website: http://​www.​europeansocialsu​rvey.​org/​