Objective
To examine whether perceived discrimination based on multiple personal characteristics
is associated with physical, emotional, and cognitive health concurrently, prospectively,
and with change in health over time among older adults.
Design
Longitudinal.
Setting
Health and Retirement Study (HRS).
Participants
Participants (N = 7,622) who completed the Leave-Behind Questionnaire as part of the
2006 HRS assessment (mean age 67 years); participants (N = 6,450) completed the same
health measures again in 2010.
Measurements
Participants rated their everyday experience with discrimination and attributed those
experiences to eight personal characteristics: race, ancestry, sex, age, weight, physical
disability, appearance, and sexual orientation. At both the 2006 and 2010 assessments,
participants completed measures of physical health (subjective health, disease burden),
emotional health (life satisfaction, loneliness), and cognitive health (memory, mental
status).
Results
Discrimination based on age, weight, physical disability, and appearance was associated
with poor subjective health, greater disease burden, lower life satisfaction, and
greater loneliness at both assessments and with declines in health across the four
years. Discrimination based on race, ancestry, sex, and sexual orientation was associated
with greater loneliness at both time points, but not with change over time. Discrimination
was mostly unrelated to cognitive health.
Conclusions
The detrimental effect of discrimination on physical and emotional health is not limited
to young adulthood but continues to contribute to health and well-being in old age.
These effects were driven primarily by discrimination based on personal characteristics
that change over time (e.g., age, weight) rather than discrimination based on more
stable characteristics (e.g., race, sex).
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 24, 2014
Accepted:
March 16,
2014
Received in revised form:
March 5,
2014
Received:
July 2,
2013
Footnotes
Supplemental digital content is available for this article in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal’s Web site (www.ajgponline.org).
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
