Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Jan 11;73(2):337-348.
doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbv076.

Aging in the Americas: Disability-free Life Expectancy Among Adults Aged 65 and Older in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Puerto Rico

Collin F Payne  1
Affiliations

Aging in the Americas: Disability-free Life Expectancy Among Adults Aged 65 and Older in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Puerto Rico

Collin F Payne. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. .

Abstract

Objectives: To estimate and compare disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) and current age patterns of disability onset and recovery from disability between the United States and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Method: Disability is measured using the activities of daily living scale. Data come from longitudinal surveys of older adult populations in Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Age patterns of transitions in and out of disability are modeled with a discrete-time logistic hazard model, and a microsimulation approach is used to estimate DFLE.

Results: Overall life expectancy for women aged 65 is 20.11 years in Costa Rica, 19.2 years in Mexico, 20.4 years in Puerto Rico, and 20.5 years in the United States. For men, these figures are 19.0 years in Costa Rica, 18.4 years in Mexico, 18.1 years in Puerto Rico, and 18.1 years in the United States. Proportion of remaining life spent free of disability for women at age 65 is comparable between Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States, with Costa Rica trailing slightly. Male estimates of DFLE are similar across the four populations.

Discussion: Though the older adult population of Latin America and the Caribbean lived many years exposed to poor epidemiological and public health conditions, their functional health in later life is comparable with the older adult population of the United States.

Keywords: Aging; Disability; Disability-free life expectancy; Latin America; Microsimulation; Multistate modeling.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Annual transition probabilities between disability states in CRELES (CR), MHAS (MX), PREHCO (PR), and HRS (US) data. Panel (A) displays the annual transition probabilities from active life to activities of daily living (ADL) disability, panel (B) displays transition probabilities from ADL disability to active life, panel (C) displays transition probabilities from active life to death, and panel (D) displays transition probabilities from ADL disability to death. CRELES = Costa Rican Longevity and Healthy Aging Study; HRS = Health and Retirement Survey; MHAS = Mexican Health and Aging Survey; PREHCO = Puerto Rican Elderly: Health Conditions.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Estimated total and disability-free life expectancy. This figure shows a comparison between the years an average individual will spend in remaining disability free and total life at ages 65, 75, and 85 by country. Lines represent the central 95% of the distribution of bootstrapped outcomes, and boxes span the first to third quartile of the outcome distribution with a vertical line at the median. Panel (A) presents the disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) and life expectancies of all individuals at ages 65, 75, and 85. Panels (B) and (C) present the DFLE and life expectancies of individuals who were initially active (B) and activities of daily living disabled (C) at ages 65, 75, and 85.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Aguila E. Diaz C. Manqing Fu M. Kapteyn A., & Pierson A (2011). Living longer in Mexico: Income security and health. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andrade E. C. D. (2010). Measuring the impact of diabetes on life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy among older adults in Mexico. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Social Sciences, 65, 381. doi:10.1093/geronb/gbp119 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ben-Shlomo Y., Kuh D. (2002). A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 285–293. doi:10.1093/ije/31.2.285 - PubMed
    1. Cai L. Hayward M. D. Saito Y. Lubitz J. Hagedorn A., & Crimmins E (2010). Estimation of multi-state life table functions and their variability from complex survey data using the SPACE Program. Demographic Research, 22, 129–157. doi:10.4054/DemRes.2010.22.6 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Colón J. L. S.,& Comision Para Evaluar El Sistema De Salud Del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico. (2005). Evaluacion Del Sistema De Salud De Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Publication types