Longitudinal Predictors of Functional Impairment in Older Adults in Europe – Evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

André Hajek and Hans-Helmut König

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Objective: To examine time-dependent predictors of functional impairment in older adults in Europe longitudinally. Methods: Data were derived from the Survey of Health Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (2004–2013). Functional impairment was assessed by using activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) indices. Fixed effects regressions were used to estimate the effects of sociodemographic factors (age, marital status, living situation, and income deciles (median split)), lifestyle factors (smoking status and alcohol consumption per week), depression, cognitive function and chronic diseases on the outcome variables. Results: Longitudinal regressions revealed that functional impairment increased significantly with age, the occurrence of depression, cognitive impairment, the number of chronic conditions, and less than daily alcohol consumption in the total sample and in both sexes. Moreover, the onset of smoking and living without a spouse/partner in household increased functional impairment in the total sample. The effect of depression on functional impairment was significantly more pronounced in men. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the relevance of changes in age, depression, cognitive function, smoking and chronic diseases for functional impairment. Since particularly depression and smoking may be avoidable, developing strategies to prevent depression or stop smoking might be useful approaches to postpone functional impairment in older adults.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146967 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 46967&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0146967

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146967

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().