TY - JOUR
T1 - US Migration status of adult children and cognitive decline among older parents who remain in Mexico
AU - Torres, Jacqueline M.
AU - Sofrygin, Oleg
AU - Rudolph, Kara E.
AU - Haan, Mary N.
AU - Wong, Rebeca
AU - Maria Glymour, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The Mexican Health and Aging Study is funded by the National Institute on Aging, US National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, Maryland) (grant R01AG018016), and the Mexico National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Aguascalientes City, Aguascalientes, Mexico). J.M.T. was supported by the National Institute on Aging, NIH (grant K01AG056602). K.E.R. was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH (grant K99DA042127). O.S. was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH (grant R01AI074345-07). M.M.G. was supported by the National Institute on Aging, NIH (grant RF1AG05548601). Conflict of interest: none declared.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
PY - 2020/8/1
Y1 - 2020/8/1
N2 - Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing rapid aging, a growing dementia burden, and relatively high rates of out-migration among working-age adults. Family member migration status may be a unique societal determinant of cognitive aging in LMIC settings. We aimed to evaluate the association between adult child US migration status and change in cognitive performance scores using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, a population-based, national-level cohort study of Mexico adults aged ≥50 years at baseline (2001), with 2-, 12-, and 14-year follow-up waves (2003, 2012, and 2015). Cognitive performance assessments were completed by 5,972 and 4,939 respondents at 11 years and 14 years of follow-up, respectively. For women, having an adult child in the United States was associated with steeper decline in verbal memory scores (e.g., for 9-year change in immediate verbal recall z score, marginal risk difference (RD) = -0.09 (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.16, −0.03); for delayed verbal recall z score, RD = -0.10 (95% CI: −0.17, −0.03)) and overall cognitive performance (for overall cognitive performance z score, RD = -0.04, 95% CI: −0.07, −0.00). There were mostly null associations for men. To our knowledge, this is the first study to have evaluated the association between family member migration status and cognitive decline; future work should be extended to other LMICs facing population aging.
AB - Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing rapid aging, a growing dementia burden, and relatively high rates of out-migration among working-age adults. Family member migration status may be a unique societal determinant of cognitive aging in LMIC settings. We aimed to evaluate the association between adult child US migration status and change in cognitive performance scores using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, a population-based, national-level cohort study of Mexico adults aged ≥50 years at baseline (2001), with 2-, 12-, and 14-year follow-up waves (2003, 2012, and 2015). Cognitive performance assessments were completed by 5,972 and 4,939 respondents at 11 years and 14 years of follow-up, respectively. For women, having an adult child in the United States was associated with steeper decline in verbal memory scores (e.g., for 9-year change in immediate verbal recall z score, marginal risk difference (RD) = -0.09 (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.16, −0.03); for delayed verbal recall z score, RD = -0.10 (95% CI: −0.17, −0.03)) and overall cognitive performance (for overall cognitive performance z score, RD = -0.04, 95% CI: −0.07, −0.00). There were mostly null associations for men. To our knowledge, this is the first study to have evaluated the association between family member migration status and cognitive decline; future work should be extended to other LMICs facing population aging.
KW - Cognitive aging
KW - Family characteristics
KW - Longitudinal analysis
KW - Migration
KW - Targeted maximum likelihood estimation
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U2 - 10.1093/aje/kwz277
DO - 10.1093/aje/kwz277
M3 - Article
C2 - 31942611
AN - SCOPUS:85089203469
VL - 189
SP - 761
EP - 769
JO - American Journal of Epidemiology
JF - American Journal of Epidemiology
SN - 0002-9262
IS - 8
ER -