Subjective health in adolescence: Comparing the reliability of contemporaneous, retrospective, and proxy reports of overall health

Influencing factors, gender differences and the decomposition of inequalities in cognitive function in Chinese older adults: a population-based cohort study

BACKGROUND

Evidence remains limited and inconsistent for assessing cognitive function in Chinese older adults (CFCOA) and inequalities in cognitive function in Chinese older adults (ICFCOA) and exploring their influencing factors and gender differences. This study aimed to identify influencing factors and inequality in CFCOA to empirically explore the existence and sources of gender differences in such inequality and analyse their heterogeneous effects.

METHODS

Based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) for three periods from 2011 to 2015, recentered influence function unconditional quantile regression (RIF-UQR) and recentered influence function ordinary least squares (RIF-OLS) regression were applied to assess influencing factors of CFCOA, while grouped treatment effect estimation, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and propensity score matching (PSM) methods were conducted to identify gender differences in ICFCOA and influencing factors, respectively.

RESULTS

The results showed heterogeneous effects of gender, age, low BMI, subjective health, smoking, education, social interactions, physical activity, and household registration on CFCOA. Additionally, on average, ICFCOA was about 19.2-36.0% higher among elderly females than among elderly males, mainly due to differences in characteristic effects and coefficient effects of factors such as marital status and education.

CONCLUSIONS

Different factors have heterogeneous and gender-differenced effects on CFCOA and ICFCOA, while the formation and exacerbation of ICFCOA were allied to marital status and education. Considering the severe ageing and the increasing incidence of cognitive decline, there is an urgent need for the government and society to adopt a comprehensive approach to practically work for promoting CFCOA and reducing ICFCOA.

Explaining socioeconomic disparities in electoral participation: The role of health in the SES-voting relationship

The substantial gap in electoral participation between upper and lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups has long been a vexing problem for modern democracies and one that demands explanation. Following separate bodies of scholarship that suggest (1) socioeconomic disadvantage diminishes health and (2) poor health demobilizes eligible voters, this paper proposes that health serves as a pathway through which social inequality manifests in disparities in electoral participation. This paper tests this hypothesis by analyzing U.S. presidential election data, in which structural equation modeling was used to decompose the association between SES and turnout, through health. Results show that health mediates approximately 20% of the relationship between SES and electoral participation. These findings imply a political explanation for the endurance of population health disparities; they may self-sustain by disproportionately limiting the political voice of the disadvantaged, for whom more egalitarian social and health policy would be most beneficial.

Resentment Is Like Drinking Poison? The Heterogeneous Health Effects of Affective Polarization

Affective polarization-the tendency for individuals to exhibit animosity toward those on the opposite side of the partisan divide-has increased in the United States in recent years. This article presents evidence that this trend may have consequences for Americans' health. Structural equation model analyses of nationally representative survey data from Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel (n = 4,685) showed heterogeneous relationships between affectively polarized attitudes and self-rated health. On one hand, such attitudes were directly negatively associated with health such that the polarized political environment was proposed to operate as a sociopolitical stressor. Simultaneously, affective polarization was positively associated with political participation, which in turn was positively associated with health, although the direct negative effect was substantially larger than the indirect positive one. These results suggest that today's increasingly hostile and pervasive form of partisanship may undermine Americans' health even as it induces greater political engagement.

Self-perceived weight and self-rated health have distinct relationships according to body mass index in Korean teenagers

It was hypothesized that adolescents who perceived themselves as underweight or overweight would be positively associated with poor self-rated health (SRH), regardless of their actual weight status, and that the SRH would be varied depending on the combination of their actual weight and their perceived weight. The study aimed to evaluate associations of self-perceived weight and body mass index (BMI)-based weight status with SRH in Korean adolescents. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 1658 female and 1888 male adolescents aged 10 to 18 years based on the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey using complex-samples logistic regression. Weight estimation was determined by comparing BMI-based weight and self-perceived body shape. Age, family affluence, and health status were confounders. In sex-specific analysis, the odds for poor SRH were higher in males who accurately estimated underweight or overweight and those who were normal weight, but overestimated weight compared with those who accurately self-perceived as being normal weight. In females, the odds for poor SRH were higher in those with normal weight but underestimated or overestimated weight compared with a female comparison group. In the overall analysis, males who accurately perceived their weight as underweight, males and females who perceived their weight as overweight despite being normal weight or overweight, and females who perceived weight as underweight despite being normal weight had higher odds for poor SRH compared with a female comparison group. In conclusion, as the hypothesis of this study, self-perceived overweight and underweight in adolescents were associated with poor SRH regardless of BMI, and the association differed by BMI in Korean adolescents.

Neighborhood structural disadvantage and biological aging in a sample of Black middle age and young adults

OBJECTIVES

Research on the social determinants of health has suggested that neighborhood disadvantage may undermine healthy aging and is particularly relevant for understanding health disparities. Recently, this work has examined deoxyribonucleic acid methylation (DNAm)-based measures of biological aging to understand the risk factors for morbidity and mortality. However, it is unknown whether neighborhood disadvantage is related to different indices of DNAm-based aging among Black Americans and whether such neighborhood effects vary as a function of age or gender.

METHODS

Our analyses of a Black American sample included 448 young adults and 493 middle-aged adults. We measured neighborhood disadvantage using the Area Deprivation Index at the census block group level. DNAm-based accelerated aging indices were measured using established procedures. Regressions with clustered standard errors were used for the analysis.

RESULTS

Neighborhood disadvantage was independently associated with acceleration in PhenoAge, GrimAge, and DunedinPoAm, among young and middle-aged adults. Further, there was no evidence that gender conditioned the effects of neighborhood disadvantage on the aging indices.

CONCLUSIONS

Regardless of age groups or gender, accelerated biological aging among Black Americans is partly rooted in differences in neighborhood disadvantage. From a policy standpoint, our findings suggest that programs that decrease neighborhood disadvantage are likely to increase healthy aging, especially among Black Americans.