ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2022
Deaths, Disparities, and Cumulative (Dis)Advantage: How Social Inequities Produce an Impairment Paradox in Later Life.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 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
15 citing papers in PubMed, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Work-active ageing or healthy worker selection? Late-life employment and happiness among older migrants in Europe.Journal of migration and health · 2026Article
- Spouses' Individual and Shared Cumulative Risk: Implications for Functional Health and Longevity in Older Adulthood.American journal of preventive medicine · 2025Article
- Intergenerational mobility, race, and allostatic load: Diminished health returns for Black older adults?SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Multimorbid life expectancy across race, socio-economic status, and sex in South Africa.Population studies · 2025Article
- The health implications of cumulative exposure to contextual (dis)advantage: methodological and substantive advances from a unique data linkage.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Cognition and Wealth Changes in Mid-to-later Life: A Latent Class Trajectories Approach Using the Health and Retirement Study.Journal of aging and health · 2024Article
- Advancing methods for the biodemography of aging within social contexts.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Dual-Function Life Expectancy.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Article
- Age Profiles of Cognitive Decline and Dementia in Late Life in the Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2022Article
- Promoting Health Equity Across the Life Span.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2022Article
- A positive association between hunger in childhood and frailty in old age: Findings from the Chinese longitudinal healthy longevity survey.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- GSA Journal Commitment to Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity: Editors Announce New Guidance.The Gerontologist · 2021Article
- GSA Journal Commitment to Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity: Editors Announce New Guidance.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2021Article
- GSA Journal Commitment to Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity: Editors Announce New Guidance.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2021Article
- GSA Journal Commitment to Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity: Editors Announce New Guidance.Innovation in aging · 2021Article
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
backgroundResearch on health across the life course consistently documents widening racial and socioeconomic disparities from childhood through adulthood, followed by stabilization or convergence in later life. This pattern appears to contradict expectations set by cumulative (dis)advantage (CAD) theory. Informed by the punctuated equilibrium perspective, we examine the relationship between midlife health and subsequent health change and mortality and consider the impact of earlier socioeconomic exposures on observed disparities.
methodsUsing the Health and Retirement Study, we characterize the functional impairment histories of a nationally representative sample of 8464 older adults between 1994 and 2016. We employ nonparametric and discrete outcome multinomial logistic regression to examine the competing risks of mortality, health change, and attrition.
resultsExposures to disadvantages are associated with poorer functional health in midlife and mortality. However, a higher number of functional limitations in midlife is negatively associated with the accumulation of subsequent limitations for White men and women and for Black women. The impact of educational attainment, occupation, wealth, and marriage on later-life health differs across race and gender groups.
conclusionsObserved stability or convergence in later-life functional health disparities is not a departure from the dynamics posited by CAD, but rather a result of the differential impact of racial and socioeconomic inequities on mortality and health at older ages. Higher exposure to disadvantages and a lower protective impact of advantageous exposures lead to higher mortality among Black Americans, a pattern which masks persistent health inequities later in life.
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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.