A Lack of Food for Thought: Midlife Food Insecurity and Its Association With Subsequent Cognitive Ability of Older Americans

Dongmei Zuo

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2024, vol. 79, issue 12, 269-270

Abstract: ObjectivesThe 50–59 age group in the United States experience higher levels of food insecurity (FI) compared to older adults. While previous research has identified an association between FI and cognition outcomes in older populations, limited research has examined midlife as a specific FI exposure window and the association of this hardship with long-run cognition outcomes.MethodsUtilizing 14 waves of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data (1995–2020), I applied mixed-effects models to assess the relationship between midlife FI exposure and later-life cognitive function, controlling for childhood disadvantages and other health-related and sociodemographic characteristics.ResultsFindings indicate that both cumulative FI duration and ever experiencing FI during ages 50–59 are significantly associated with subsequent cognitive decline. Specifically, ever experiencing FI during midlife was linked to a decrease in cognitive function by 0.07 standard units (95% confidence interval [CI], −0.13 to −0.003; p

Keywords: Cognition; Cumulative inequality; Dementia; Life course (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbae167 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:79:y:2024:i:12:p:269-270.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().