TY - JOUR T1 - Neighborhood age structure and cognitive function in a nationally-representative sample of older adults in the U.S. JF - Soc Sci Med Y1 - 2017 A1 - Esther M Friedman A1 - Regina A Shih A1 - Mary E Slaughter A1 - Margaret M Weden A1 - Kathleen A. Cagney KW - Aged KW - Aged, 80 and over KW - Aging KW - Cognition KW - Female KW - Health Status KW - Humans KW - Interpersonal Relations KW - Male KW - Residence Characteristics KW - Social Support KW - Socioeconomic factors KW - United States AB -

Recent evidence suggests that living in a neighborhood with a greater percentage of older adults is associated with better individual health, including lower depression, better self-rated health, and a decreased risk of overall mortality. However, much of the work to date suffers from four limitations. First, none of the U.S.-based studies examine the association at the national level. Second, no studies have examined three important hypothesized mechanisms - neighborhood socioeconomic status and neighborhood social and physical characteristics - which are significantly correlated with both neighborhood age structure and health. Third, no U.S. study has longitudinally examined cognitive health trajectories. We build on this literature by examining nine years of nationally-representative data from the Health and Retirement Study (2002-2010) on men and women aged 51 and over linked with Census data to examine the relationship between the percentage of adults 65 and older in a neighborhood and individual cognitive health trajectories. Our results indicate that living in a neighborhood with a greater percentage of older adults is related to better individual cognition at baseline but we did not find any significant association with cognitive decline. We also explored potential mediators including neighborhood socioeconomic status, perceived neighborhood cohesion and perceived neighborhood physical disorder. We did not find evidence that neighborhood socioeconomic status explains this relationship; however, there is suggestive evidence that perceived cohesion and disorder may explain some of the association between age structure and cognition. Although more work is needed to identify the precise mechanisms, this work may suggest a potential contextual target for public health interventions to prevent cognitive impairment.

VL - 174 UR - http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0277953616306669http://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0277953616306669?httpAccept=text/plainhttp://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0277953616306669?httpAccept=text/xml U1 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28033564?dopt=Abstract JO - Social Science & Medicine ER -