ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2019
Employment trajectories in midlife and cognitive performance in later life: longitudinal study of older American men and women.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cumulative layoffs in adulthood and cognitive function in mid-to-later life among US working-age adults, 1979-2020.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Associations between occupational trajectories at ages 35-55 and later-life cognition in older adults in Chile.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Trajectories of late-life job insecurity and labor force participation: Associations with cognitive function and impairment in the Health and Retirement Study's harmonized cognitive assessment protocol.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Joint Trajectories of Frailty and Cognitive Function in Older Koreans Based on 14-Year Period Data From Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA).Geriatrics & gerontology international · 2026Article
- Resource or crisis? Cognitive functioning after widowhood and why paid work status matters.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Modeling approaches for estimating the effects of risk factors using longitudinal lifecourse exposure data in dementia research.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Review
- Occupational gaps and mild cognitive impairment among older workers.European geriatric medicine · 2025Article
- The predictive power of employment trajectories on cognition of older adults: Evidence from Chile.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Do type, timing and duration of life course non-employment differentially predict dementia risk? An application of sequence analysis.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Life course financial mobility and later-life memory function and decline by gender, and race and ethnicity: an intersectional analysis of the US KHANDLE and STAR cohort studies.The lancet. Healthy longevity · 2024Article
- Mid-life employment trajectories and subsequent memory function and rate of decline in rural South Africa, 2000-22.International journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Association of Perceived Job Insecurity With Subsequent Memory Function and Decline Among Adults 55 Years or Older in England and the US, 2006 to 2016.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Duration of subjective poverty in relation to subsequent cognitive performance and decline among adults aged ≥64 in China, 2005-2018.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- Cumulative employment intensity and complexity across the life course and cognitive function in later life among European women and men.Annals of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Association of work-family experience with mid- and late-life memory decline in US women.Neurology · 2020Article
- Women's Work-Family Histories and Cognitive Performance in Later Life.American journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Sickness absence trajectories following labour market participation patterns: a cohort study in Catalonia (Spain), 2012-2014.BMC public health · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough being employed during midlife is positively associated with cognitive function in later life, little is known with respect to cumulative trajectories or durations of time spent in different kinds of work.
methodsWe investigated the relationships between employment trajectory from ages 31 years to 50 years and cognitive skills at ages 50-78 years among 2521 adults in the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1968 to 2016. Sequence analysis was used to identify prototypical employment trajectories, capturing employment status and high versus lower job skill level at each year of age from 31 years to 50 years. Adjusted and weighted logistic regression was used to estimate relationships between employment trajectory and performance on each of four cognitive tests representing numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, health literacy and financial literacy. Dose-response relationships between the duration of high-skill employment and cognitive skills were examined.
resultsSeven prototypical employment trajectories were identified, the most common being consistently lower skill employment (44%; 1105/2521). Consistently high-skill and fluctuating skill trajectories were associated with high numerical reasoning scores (OR=1.54, 95% CI 0.99 to 2.40; OR=2.52, 95% CI 1.39 to 4.58, respectively), compared with consistently lower skill employment. There was a dose-response relationship between duration of high-skill employment and numerical reasoning (OR=1.17; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.28), plateauing after approximately 4 years of high-skill employment.
conclusionsSequence analysis of exposure trajectories is a novel method for life course epidemiology that accounts for exposure timing, duration and ordering. Our results using this method indicate that the duration may be more important than the timing of high-skill midlife employment for later-life numerical reasoning skills.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.