Mental and physical health consequences of spousal health shocks among older adults.

OBJECTIVE: To examine how the experience of a negative health event (i.e., onset of heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, cancer, or stroke) of one spouse affects the mental and physical well-being of the other partner as measured by depressive symptoms and self-reported health. METHODS: We employ latent growth curve analysis and examine adults 50+ using six waves of data (1998-2008) from the Health and Retirement Study. RESULTS: One spouse's health shock affects the health of the other partner. Results indicate that a spouse's onset of a severe health condition worsens the mental health of women and the self-reported health of men. DISCUSSION: These findings illustrate that the family context of spouses is important to consider when examining health.

Maternal religious attendance and low birth weight.

We use data from the U.S. Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to test whether maternal religious attendance is protective against low birth weight. Building on previous research, we also consider the mediating influence of mental health, cigarette use, alcohol use, illicit drug use, poor nutrition, and prenatal care. Our results indicate that maternal religious attendance is protective against low birth weight. In fact, each unit increase in the frequency of religious attendance reduces the odds of low birth weight by 15%. Religious attendance is also associated with lower odds of cigarette use and poor nutrition, but is unrelated to mental health, alcohol use, illicit drug use, and prenatal care. Although lower rates of cigarette use help to mediate or explain 11% of the association between maternal religious attendance and low birth weight, we find no evidence to substantiate the mediating influence of mental health, alcohol use, illicit drug use, poor nutrition, or prenatal care. Our results suggest that the health benefits of religious involvement may extend across generations (from mother to child); however, additional research is needed to fully explain the association between maternal religious attendance and low birth weight. It is also important for future research to consider the extent to which the apparent health advantages of religious adults might be attributed to health advantages in early life, especially those related to healthy birth weight.

Age at first birth, parity, and post-reproductive mortality among white and black women in the US, 1982-2002.

We investigate the relationship between the timing of first birth, parity, and women's risk of post-reproductive mortality over twenty-one years (1982-2002), among representative samples of black and white women in the United States. Data are taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women. We find early childbearing to be associated with higher mortality among whites, while later childbearing is associated with higher mortality among blacks. The effect of age at first birth on white women's mortality is explained by background and mediating social, economic, and health related factors, but this effect remains robust for black women. In addition, childless white women have a higher risk of post-reproductive mortality than those with 2-3 children. High parity (6+ children) has a significant protective effect for blacks, though the effect is reduced with age. A similar protective effect of high parity becomes apparent among whites only after controlling for background and mediating characteristics. Findings are interpreted in light of the weathering hypothesis and from a life course framework that views women's fertility as adaptive to particular social and historical contexts.

Causes of death and mortality crossovers by race.

The phenomenon of "mortality crossovers," the intersection of age curves of mortality at older ages, has been observed in comparisons of various populations for some time. Some researchers have argued that crossovers are an artifact of deficient reporting of age that is greater for some populations than others. Other researchers attribute crossovers to selective processes by age that vary by group. We use mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the U.S. at ages 55 and over, supplemented by comparable data from matched records of the National Health Interview Survey and National Death Index, to reexamine causes of death linked to mortality crossovers for Whites and Blacks in the U.S. Findings portray a more elaborate set of influences of causes of death than has been discovered heretofore; however, the major finding is that the mortality crossover for Whites and Blacks in the U.S. is real and, although observed for several causes of death, operates principally through varying trajectories of heart disease mortality.

Self-reported health and adult mortality risk: an analysis of cause-specific mortality.

The relationship between self-reported health and mortality is well documented, but less well understood. This study uses the National Health Interview Survey linked to mortality data from the National Death Index to examine the association between self-reported health and a comprehensive set of underlying cause of death and multiple cause of death categories. We also examined whether gender moderates the relationship between self-reported health and cause-specific mortality risk. Results show that the relationship between self-rated health and mortality differs by cause of death and by number of causes. Deaths due to diabetes, infectious and respiratory diseases, and a higher number of causes are most strongly associated with subjective health. Self-reported health also exhibits a moderately strong association with deaths due to heart disease, stroke, and cancer. In contrast, self-rated health is only weakly or not associated with deaths due to accident, homicide, and suicide. The relationship between self-reported health and mortality risk is also found to be stronger among men for several causes, although not for all. These findings should help researchers and policy-makers to better understand the specific predictive power of this important global measure of health.