Resilience, Accelerated Aging and Persistently Poor Health: Diverse Trajectories of Health in Malawi.

Individuals age at vastly different rates resulting in significant within-population heterogeneity in health and aging outcomes. This diversity in health and aging trajectories has rarely been investigated among low-income aging populations that have experienced substantial hardships throughout their lifecourses. Utilizing 2006-2018 data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) and estimating group-based trajectory models (GBTM), our analyses identified three distinct lifecourse health trajectories: (1) comparatively good initial mental and physical health that persisted throughout the lifecourse ("resilient aging"); (2) relatively good initial mental and physical health that started to deteriorate during mid-adulthood ("accelerated aging"); and (3) poor initial mental and physical health that further declined over the lifecourse ("aging with persistently poor health").

Heterogenous trajectories in physical, mental and cognitive health among older Americans: Roles of genetics and life course contextual factors.

We investigate the roles of genetic predispositions, childhood SES and adult educational attainment in shaping trajectories for three important components of the overall health of older adults -- BMI, depressive symptoms and cognition. We use the Health & Retirement Study (HRS) and group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) to identify subgroups of people who share the same underlying trajectories ages 51-94 years. After identifying common underlying health trajectories, we use fractional multinomial logit models to estimate associations of (1) polygenic scores for BMI, depression, ever-smoked, education, cognition and subjective wellbeing, (2) childhood SES and (3) educational attainment with the probabilities of trajectory group memberships.