IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v75y2020i2p436-447..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Persistent, Consistent, and Extensive: The Trend of Increasing Pain Prevalence in Older Americans

Author

Listed:
  • Zachary Zimmer
  • Anna Zajacova
  • Philippa Clarke

Abstract

ObjectivesAssess trends in pain prevalence from 1992 to 2014 among older U.S. adults and by major population subgroups, and test whether the trends can be explained by changes in population composition.MethodsHealth and Retirement Study data include information on any pain, pain intensity, and limitations in usual activities due to pain. Average annual percent change in prevalence is calculated for any and for 2 levels of pain—mild/moderate and nonlimiting and severe and/or limiting—across demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, and for those with and without specific chronic conditions. Generalized linear latent and mixed models examine trends adjusting for covariates.ResultsLinear and extensive increases in pain prevalence occurred across the total population and subgroups. The average annual percent increase was in the 2%–3% range depending upon age and sex. Increases were consistent across subgroups, persistent over time, and not due to changes in population composition. Without increases in educational attainment over time, pain prevalence increases would be even higher.DiscussionThe increases in pain prevalence among older Americans are alarming and potentially of epidemic proportions. Population-health research must monitor and understand these worrisome trends.

Suggested Citation

  • Zachary Zimmer & Anna Zajacova & Philippa Clarke, 2020. "Persistent, Consistent, and Extensive: The Trend of Increasing Pain Prevalence in Older Americans," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(2), pages 436-447.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:2:p:436-447.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbx162
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Glei, Dana A. & Weinstein, Maxine, 2023. "Economic distress, obesity, and the rise in pain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 339(C).
    2. Macchia, Lucía, 2022. "Pain trends and pain growth disparities, 2009–2021," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:2:p:436-447.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.