IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v75y2020i8p1783-1795..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marital Status and Dementia: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

Author

Listed:
  • Hui Liu
  • Zhenmei Zhang
  • Seung-won Choi
  • Kenneth M Langa
  • Deborah Carr

Abstract

ObjectivesWe provide one of the first population-based studies of variation in dementia by marital status in the United States.MethodWe analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000–2014). The sample included 15,379 respondents (6,650 men and 8,729 women) aged 52 years and older in 2000 who showed no evidence of dementia at the baseline survey. Dementia was assessed using either the modified version of the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS) or the proxy’s assessment. Discrete-time hazard regression models were estimated to predict odds of dementia.ResultsAll unmarried groups, including the cohabiting, divorced/separated, widowed, and never married, had significantly higher odds of developing dementia over the study period than their married counterparts; economic resources and, to a lesser degree, health-related factors accounted for only part of the marital status variation in dementia. For divorced/separated and widowed respondents, the differences in the odds of dementia relative to married respondents were greater among men than among women.DiscussionThese findings will be helpful for health policy makers and practitioners who seek to better identify vulnerable subpopulations and to design effective intervention strategies to reduce dementia risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Hui Liu & Zhenmei Zhang & Seung-won Choi & Kenneth M Langa & Deborah Carr, 2020. "Marital Status and Dementia: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(8), pages 1783-1795.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:8:p:1783-1795.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbz087
    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. Estela Calatayud & Carlos Salavera & Isabel Gómez-Soria, 2021. "Cognitive Differences in the Older Adults Living in the General Community: Gender and Mental Occupational State Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-12, March.
    2. Giorgia Adani & Tommaso Filippini & Caterina Garuti & Marcella Malavolti & Giulia Vinceti & Giovanna Zamboni & Manuela Tondelli & Chiara Galli & Manuela Costa & Marco Vinceti & Annalisa Chiari, 2020. "Environmental Risk Factors for Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Dementia and Frontotemporal Dementia: A Case-Control Study in Northern Italy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-18, October.
    3. Xianghe Zhu & Martina Luchetti & Damaris Aschwanden & Amanda A. Sesker & Yannick Stephan & Angelina R. Sutin & Antonio Terracciano, 2023. "Multidimensional Assessment of Subjective Well-being and Risk of Dementia: Findings from the UK Biobank Study," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 629-650, February.
    4. Jeffrey E Stokes & Anyah Prasad & Adrita Barooah & Elisabeth J Stam, 2023. "Longitudinal Dyadic Associations Between Loneliness and Cognition Among Older Couples in the United States," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 78(7), pages 1204-1214.
    5. Liu, Hui & Zhang, Zhenmei & Zhang, Yan, 2021. "A national longitudinal study of marital quality and cognitive decline among older men and women," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    6. Jing Li & Xu Hui & Zhenxing Lu & Xiaocao Ren & Wenlong Yan & Peijing Yan & Liang Yao & Kehu Yang, 2022. "PROTOCOL: The association between marital transitions and physical and mental health in late life: A systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(2), June.
    7. Liu, Hui & Chopik, William J. & Shrout, M. Rosie & Wang, Juwen, 2024. "A national longitudinal dyadic analysis of spousal education and cognitive decline in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 343(C).
    8. West, Jessica S. & Smith, Sherri L. & Dupre, Matthew E., 2023. "The impact of hearing loss on trajectories of depressive symptoms in married couples," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 321(C).
    9. Zhang, Zhenmei & Liu, Hui & Choi, Seung-won Emily, 2021. "Marital loss and risk of dementia: Do race and gender matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 275(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:8:p:1783-1795.. 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.