Marital Status and Advance Care Planning Among Older Adults: Do Gendered Patterns Vary by Age?

Objectives: Advance care planning (ACP), which comprises a living will, durable power of attorney for healthcare (DPAHC), and end-of-life discussions, is an inherently relational process. However, it is unclear how marital status affects men's and women's ACP over the life course. Drawing on social control and gender-as-relational frameworks, we examine marital status differences in ACP and how these patterns differ by gender and age.

Cigarette Prices and Disparities in Smoking Cessation in the United States.

Introduction: Achieving cessation in people with established smoking patterns remains a challenge. Increasing cigarette prices has been one of the most successful strategies for lowering smoking rates. The extent to which it has remained effective in encouraging cessation among adults in recent years and how the effectiveness has varied by sociodemographic characteristics is unclear.

Tobacco taxes as a community protective factor against cognitive decline in later life.

Introduction: Prior work has suggested that encouraging smoking cessation could be an important tool for curbing later-life cognitive decline and cognitive disparities. This study investigates whether higher cigarette taxes were associated with lower odds of subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and lesser cognitive disparities.

Methods: Using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data collected between 2019 and 2021, this study estimates logistic regression models predicting SCD by average state cigarette taxes in the last 5, 10, and 20 years, with gradual adjustment for sociodemographic and state characteristics.

Parental Smoking in Childhood as a Smoking Risk Factor Throughout Middle Age.

Introduction: Children of people who smoke have a well-documented higher risk of smoking initiation. However, little is known about the persistence of the association between parental smoking and children's own smoking as they age.

Methods: This study uses data collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics collected between 1968 and 2017 and investigates the association between parental smoking and children's own smoking through middle age and how it may be modified by adult children's SES using regression models.

Employment Pathways during Economic Recession and Recovery and Adult Health.

Our study bridges literatures on the health effects of job loss and life course employment trajectories to evaluate the selection into employment pathways and their associations with health in the short and medium terms. We apply sequence analysis to monthly employment calendars from a population-based sample of working-age women and men observed from 2009 to 2013 (N = 737). We identify six distinct employment status clusters: stable full-time employment, stable part-time employment, stably being out of the labor force, long-term unemployment, transition out of the labor force, and unstable full-time employment.

Occupational differences in advance care planning: Are medical professionals more likely to plan?

Advance care planning (ACP) helps ensure that treatment preferences are met at the end of life. Medical professionals typically are responsible for facilitating patients' ACP, and may be especially effective in doing so if they have first-hand insights from their own planning. However, no large-scale U.

Cigarette taxes, prices, and disparities in current smoking in the United States.

Increasing cigarette taxes has been the cornerstone of tobacco control policy. Recent work has argued that raising cigarette taxes alone may no longer be an effective strategy for lowering smoking rates. We largely confirm these findings but also find that increases in price continue to predict lower smoking participation in most model specifications.

Tobacco control policy and smoking among older Americans: An analysis of a nationally-representative longitudinal sample (1992-2014).

Smoking has decreased less rapidly among older adults than among the working age population in the United States. This study examines whether tobacco control policy, specifically smoke-free laws and increased cigarette prices, are associated with smoking cessation and lower smoking intensity among older adults. In addition, it considers whether the effect of smoke-free laws varied by labor force participation.

Rent Assistance and Health: Findings from Detroit.

This study assesses the relationship between rent assistance and health in a longitudinal, population-representative sample collected in the Detroit metro area. Previous research has found that rent assistance recipients are less healthy than otherwise similar non-recipients in the cross-section, but the evidence about the effects of rent assistance on health in the long run is ambiguous. Our study uses panel survey data to compare the health of recipients and eligible non-recipients at the study's onset and four years later at follow-up with respect to an extensive set of physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes.

The Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion and Smoking Cessation Among Low-Income Smokers.

Introduction: This study sought to empirically evaluate whether the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act increased smoking cessation among low-income childless adult smokers.

Methods: The effects of the Medicaid expansion on smoking quit attempts and the probability of 30- and 90-day smoking cessation were evaluated using logistic regression and data from the 2010-2011 and 2014-2015 waves of the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Using boosted logistic regression, the Tobacco Use Supplement was restricted to an analytic sample composed of childless adults with high probability of being <138% of the federal poverty level.

Smoke-Free Policies and Smoking Cessation in the United States, 2003-2015.

(1) Background: Smoking restrictions have been shown to be associated with reduced smoking, but there are a number of gaps in the literature surrounding the relationship between smoke-free policies and cessation, including the extent to which this association may be modified by sociodemographic characteristics. (2) Methods: We analyzed data from the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey, 2003-2015, to explore whether multiple measures of smoking restrictions were associated with cessation across population subgroups. We examined area-based measures of exposure to smoke-free laws, as well as self-reported exposure to workplace smoke-free policies.

Gender differences in relationships between sociodemographic factors and e-cigarette use with smoking cessation: 2014-15 current population survey tobacco use supplement.

Background: There is conflicting evidence regarding whether men and women are equally likely to quit smoking. We assessed whether gender differences in smoking cessation varied between different sociodemographic groups and across e-cigarette use.

Methods: The 2014-15 cross-section of the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplement was weighted to represent the US adult population of current/former smokers (N = 16 040).

Comparability of Mortality Estimates from Social Surveys and Vital Statistics Data in the United States.

Social surveys prospectively linked with death records provide invaluable opportunities for the study of the relationship between social and economic circumstances and mortality. Although survey-linked mortality files play a prominent role in U.S.

Material hardship and sleep: results from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study.

Objective: Sleep is unequally distributed in the US population. People with low socioeconomic status report worse quality and shorter sleep than people with high socioeconomic status. Past research hypothesized that a potential reason for this link could be exposure to material hardship.

Increase in frailty of older workers and retirees predicted by negative psychosocial working conditions on the job.

Well-established evidence has shown that negative psychosocial working conditions adversely affect the health and well-being of prime-age workers, yet little is known about the consequences on the health of older workers. Our article examines the associations between declines in health in later life, measured as frailty, and negative psychosocial working conditions, and considers the role of retirement. We use longitudinal cross-national data collected by SHARE I and SHARE IV and focus on the respondents who were working at baseline.

Social isolation as a risk factor for inadequate diet of older Eastern Europeans.

Objectives: Social isolation has been shown to be a risk factor for inadequate diet among older adults living in Western Europe and North America. This article investigates whether socially isolated older adults (65+) living in Eastern Europe also experience an increased risk of dietary inadequacy.

Methods: The study used SHARE IV survey data collected in the Czech Republic (n = 2,867), Poland (n = 772), and Hungary (n = 1,353).

Curing over-use by prescribing fees: an evaluation of the effect of user fees' implementation on healthcare use in the Czech Republic.

In 2008, the Czech Republic instituted a new policy that requires most patients to pay a small fee for some inpatient and outpatient healthcare services. Using the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe, this article examines the changes in healthcare utilization of Czechs 50 years and older following the new fee requirement by constructing difference-in-differences regression models focusing on four outcome measures: any visits to primary care physician, any hospitalization, number of visits to the primary care physician and number of nights hospitalized. For this population, I find that the likelihood of having any primary care visit decreased after the policy was instituted.

Unemployment, measured and perceived decline of economic resources: contrasting three measures of recessionary hardships and their implications for adopting negative health behaviors.

Economic downturns could have long-term impacts on population health if they promote changes in health behaviors, but the evidence for whether people are more or less likely to adopt negative health behaviors in economically challenging times has been mixed. This paper argues that researchers need to draw more careful distinctions amongst different types of recessionary hardships and the mechanisms that may underlie their associations with health behaviors. We focus on unemployment experience, measured decline in economic resources, and perceived decline in economic resources, all of which are likely to occur more often during recessions, and explore whether their associations with health behaviors are consistent or different.

Tough choices in tough times: debt and medication nonadherence.

Debt is a ubiquitous component of households' financial portfolios. Yet we have scant understanding of how household debt constrains spending on needed health care. Diverse types of debt have different financial properties and recent work has shown that they may have varying implications for spending on needed health care.

Debt and foregone medical care.

Most American households carry debt, yet we have little understanding of how debt influences health behavior, especially health care seeking. We examined associations between foregone medical care and debt using a population-based sample of 914 southeastern Michigan residents surveyed in the wake of the late-2000s recession. Overall debt and ratios of debt to income and debt to assets were positively associated with foregoing medical or dental care in the past 12 months, even after adjusting for the poorer socioeconomic and health characteristics of those foregoing care and for respondents' household incomes and net worth.

Perceived job insecurity and health: the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study.

Objective: To examine the association between perceived job insecurity in the next 12 months and current health with a sample representing working-aged employed adults in southeast Michigan in late 2009/early 2010 (n, 440 to 443).

Methods: Logistic regression was used to compare the health of participants who perceived job insecurity with those who did not, with adjustments for objective employment problems and social characteristics.

Results: Insecure workers were more likely to report fair or poor self-rated health (odds ratio [OR], 2.