COVID-19 And Mental Health Outcomes Of Older Adults: Evidence From Mexico.

Estimates using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, a national longitudinal sample of older adults in Mexico, show elevated risk for negative mental health outcomes for those experiencing COVID-19 infection or major COVID-19-related adverse events. Predicted elevated probabilities were greater for a major adverse event than for COVID-19 infection, and they varied across sociodemographic groups defined by age, sex, education, and urban-rural residence.

Economic Resources and Health: A Bi-Directional Cycle for Resilience in Old Age.

Objectives: The paper offers an expanded framework for conducting empirical research on resilient aging. Methods: We review the conceptual frameworks for resilient aging and incorporate the role of economic factors as resources that contribute to resilience, in addition to social and psychological factors emphasized in the existing literature. Moreover, the idea of reinforcing cycles of resilience is incorporated in the framework. Existing empirical evidence that supports the conceptual arguments is presented. Results: Examples from Mexico and other low-middle-income countries are included, as well as from high-income countries. Data requirements for applying the conceptual framework in empirical analysis and the state of data availability are examined. We illustrate the measures that are available for this purpose using the Mexican Health and Aging Study. Discussion: We discuss and conclude that the state of the field is rich in data to conduct empirical work on resilience in old age.

Health Shocks and Economic Well-being of the Aging Population: Evidence from Mexico.

We exploit the longitudinal Mexican Health and Aging Study to estimate the effects of health shocks in the short-run on the subsequent economic well-being of the aging population in Mexico. While there is substantial evidence indicating negative economic effects of such changes in industrialized countries, little is known about health impacts on the future economic position of older adults in low- and middle-income countries. This paper takes an important step towards filling this gap in knowledge. Our results are widely relevant, with a large percentage of the world's population residing in developing countries such as Mexico that are experiencing rapid aging. We find evidence of negative impacts of health shocks on subsequent economic well-being of older adults in Mexico, but the effect varies according to several dimensions. First, the impact is clearly on income, not wealth. Second, responses are heterogenous across sources of income, with evidence of an impact mainly on labor income. Third, we find clear differences by gender in the impact of a health shock, with a larger negative impact on men. Fourth, we conclude that the population groups most negatively affected are those with the greatest degree of vulnerability prior to the shock, as measured by education and access to health insurance. Even though Mexico has made important gains with anti-poverty programs such as the Programa 70+ pension and a move towards universal health insurance, additional interventions targeted at the most vulnerable subsets of the aging population might be warranted.

Dynamics of Economic Security among the Aging in Mexico: 2001-2012.

Similar to other developing countries, population aging in Mexico has accelerated, raising concerns that economic disparities will widen even more. We use data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study for 2001 and 2012 to derive measures of economic security ─ income and its sources, and wealth and its components ─ and describe how they changed over time and varied across key characteristics. The database is unique for a developing country: longitudinal and spanning a relatively long time period, and nationally representative of older persons (n=12,400; ages 50+). We conduct descriptive analysis for the full sample, and for sub-samples defined by 'safety net' indicators, health status, and demographic characteristics. Given that this time period included crucial economic and social changes in Mexico, we derive period results, measuring differences across time in two cross-sections; and longitudinal results, capturing changes among individuals as they age. In-depth examination of income and wealth identifies important contributors to old-age economic security in Mexico; we confirm several expected patterns and provide first evidence about others. Older adults with low income and asset values in Mexico have less diverse income sources and asset types; real incomes of older persons decreased substantially, and their income and asset portfolios became less diverse over the period. With older age, Mexicans relied more heavily on transfers and family help, and less on earnings. Overall, limited safety net options and worse health conditions were associated with less robust and deteriorating economic profiles.

Implications of Environmental Chores for Schooling: Children's Time Fetching Water and Firewood in Tanzania.

In many developing countries, children devote substantial time to collecting firewood and fetching water. Is there a connection between such time-consuming work and children's schooling? If so, environmental degradation may have serious detrimental implications for children's education. To explore this question, this case study set in rural Tanzania uses evidence collected from children and their mothers about children's environmental chores. Although the sample is small, we find some descriptive quantitative evidence as well as qualitative evidence from focus groups with children supporting such a link, consistent with results from the few econometric analyses set in Africa. We also document substantial demands by schools for students to fetch water. The proposed conceptual framework takes into account confounding factors including school-related violence, which affected more than one-third of children in this study. We make a case for future research based on larger data collection projects designed to explore these issues more fully.

Unmet Need for Family Planning in Sri Lanka: Low Enough or Still an Issue?

CONTEXT: Family planning efforts achieved considerable success in Sri Lanka during the late 20th century; however, overall levels and trends may mask relatively high levels of unmet need under certain conditions. METHODS: Data from the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey of Sri Lanka (DHS-SL) were used to estimate unmet need for limiting and spacing births among ever-married women aged 15-49, overall and by key characteristics. Twelve definitions of unmet need of varying stringency were used to assess the sensitivity of results to a variety of measurement issues. Comparable estimates from the 1987 DHS-SL were used to provide context on changes in unmet need over time. RESULTS: Total unmet need in 2007 ranged from 1.6% under the narrowest definition to 19.3% under the broadest. Levels of unmet need for spacing births in 2007 were lower than 3% for all measures and for most subsamples. In contrast, levels of unmet need for limiting were generally higher and more varied, both in relation to the definition of unmet need used and across subsamples. Unmet need for limiting was particularly high in certain groups if women's use of traditional contraceptive methods and practice of prolonged abstinence were considered not to meet their contraceptive need. CONCLUSIONS: Continued progress regarding contraceptive prevalence and method mix could contribute to further reducing unmet need for family planning in Sri Lanka and to meeting women's reproductive and health goals. Renewed policy emphasis on the family planning needs and concerns of selected groups would promote such goals.

Modeling old-age wealth with endogenous early-life outcomes: The case of Mexico.

This paper contributes to the literature on the life course and aging by examining the association between early-life outcomes and late-life well being, using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study. Empirical research in this area has been challenged by the potential endogeneity of the early-life outcomes of interest, an issue which most studies ignore or downplay. Our contribution takes two forms: (1) we examine in detail the potential importance of two key life-cycle outcomes, age at marriage (a measure of family formation) and years of educational attainment (a measure of human capital investment) for old-age wealth, and (2) we illustrate the empirical value of past context variables that could help model the association between early-life outcomes and late-life well being. Our illustrative approach, matching macro-level historical policy and census variables to individual records to use as instruments in modeling the endogeneity of early-life behaviors, yields a statistically identified two-stage model of old-age wealth with minimum bias. We use simulations to show that the results for the model of wealth in old age are meaningfully different when comparing the approach that accounts for endogeneity with an approach that assumes exogeneity of early-life outcomes. Furthermore, our results suggest that in the Mexican case, models which ignore the potential endogeneity of early-life outcomes are likely to under-estimate the effects of such variables on old-age wealth.

Old-Age Wealth in Mexico: The Role of Reproductive, Human Capital, and Employment Decisions.

The authors examined relationships between the wealth of older adults and their early-life decisions regarding investment in human capital, family formation, and work activities in Mexico, using the 2001 Mexican Health and Aging Study. The authors examined correlates of accumulated financial wealth by gender and across three age cohorts: 50 to 59, 60 to 69, and 70 years or older. The authors outline the changing context these cohorts experienced during their lifetimes; describe patterns of net financial worth by main covariates across groups defined by age, sex, and marital status; and present the results of multivariate models of net worth. Simulations were conducted to illustrate patterns of net worth associated with alternative scenarios depicting differing representative combinations of life-course characteristics by age cohort. The findings suggest that old-age financial wealth in Mexico is more closely associated with family formation and human capital decisions than with employment decisions over the lifetime.