social determinants of active aging differences in mortality and the loss of healthy life between different income levels among older japanese in the ages cohort study社会决定因素的积极老龄化差异死亡率和健康生活的损失不同收入水平在年长的日本年龄队列研究.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Current Gerontology and Geriatrics Research Volume 2012, Article ID 701583, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2012/701583 Research Article Social Determinants of Active Aging: Differences in Mortality and the Loss of Healthy Life between Different Income Levels among Older Japanese in the AGES Cohort Study Hiroshi Hirai,1 Katsunori Kondo,2 and Ichiro Kawachi3 1 Department of Civil Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Iwate University, Iwate, Morioka 020-8551, Japan 2 Center for Well-Being and Society, Nihon Fukushi University, Nagoya 460-0012, Japan 3 Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Hiroshi Hirai, hirai181kan@ Received 2 May 2012; Accepted 12 August 2012 Academic Editor: Jean Marie Robine Copyright © 2012 Hiroshi Hirai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We examined the relationship between income, mortality, and loss of years of healthy life in a sample of older persons in Japan. We analyzed 22,829 persons aged 65 or older who were functionally independent at baseline as a part of the Aichi Gerontological Eva- luation Study (AGES). Two outcome measures were adopted, mortality and loss of healthy life. Independent variables were income level and age. The occurrence of mortality and need for care during these 1,461 days were tracked. Cox regressions were used to calculate the hazard ratio for mortality and loss of healthy life by income level. We found that people with lower incomes were more likely than those with higher incomes to report worse health. Fo