Obesity, smoking, physical labor may explain disability disparities in U.S.: study

Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-02 00:35:03|Editor: huaxia

CHICAGO, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Excess body mass, smoking and manual labor may explain a large proportion of disability disparities in the United States, according to a study posted on the website of the University of Michigan (UM) on Monday.

The researchers followed more than 3,000 individuals at risk for disability from 2003 to 2015 by using data from the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world, housed at the UM Institute for Social Research.

They found that those three factors accounted for 60 percent of educational disparities in disability in younger women (65 and younger); 65 percent to 70 percent in younger men; 40 percent in older women and 20 percent to 60 percent in older men.

To define disability, the researchers utilized a standard set of survey indicators that ask about people's ability to carry out everyday life activities such as bathing or showering, preparing meals and doing heavy housework.

They found that smoking and manual labor were the main drivers of disparities in disability in men under 65, whereas for both younger and older women, the main driver was overweight and obesity.

"We know that smoking, obesity and manual labor are heavily shaped by educational attainment, and that they in turn increase the risk of disability," said lead author Tarlise Townsend, who conducted the work while being a doctoral student at UM's School of Public Health. "That allowed us to estimate how much of the disability gap in the U.S. population is explained by those risk factors, versus how much of it has to be explained by other mechanisms."

For a long time, disability seemed to be falling in the American population, but that trend ended in the early 2000s, Townsend said. Now, Americans are becoming disabled at younger ages, and educational disparities in disability seem to be growing.

The study has been published in the Journal of Gerontology Social Sciences. Enditem

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