Abstract
Walking (or gait) speed is an important measure of health and frailty among the elderly. Little, however, is known about the relationship between walking speed and family situation, another important determinant of health at old age. This study provides a longitudinal perspective of the predictive power of the current family situation, measured in terms of partnership and parenthood, on slow walking speed. We used the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K) for persons aged 60 years and older, living in private or institutional households. We performed two types of GEE-regressions predicting slow walking speed in the follow-up by the characteristics of the previous wave, and the decline in walking speed between two waves by characteristics from the first of the two waves. We found that family situation at old age significantly predicts health in terms of slow walking speed; the relationship with changes in health is less clear. Among both sexes, having no children is related to slow walking speed albeit the effect is only statistically significant for men. In addition, childless persons living in a partnership showed the steepest decline in walking speed. For men there is a clear positive gradient between the amount of family resources and walking speed: the childless living alone have the slowest walking speed, those living in a partnership and have children have the highest. For women, no positive gradient exists. On the contrary, living in a partnership exerts a negative effect, both among the childless and among those with children.
Highlights
Walking speed is an important measure of health and frailty among the elderly (Bergman et al 2007; Studenski et al 2011; Cooper et al 2014)
The relationship between fast walking speed and health is rooted in more healthy behaviors, lower cardiovascular risk factors, and lower levels of inflammatory markers (Elbaz et al 2013)
(2) In the “Change Models” we explored the decline in walking speed between two waves using the characteristics from the first of the two waves as predictors
Summary
Walking (or gait) speed is an important measure of health and frailty among the elderly (Bergman et al 2007; Studenski et al 2011; Cooper et al 2014). Slow walking speed is related to increased mortality (Studenski et al 2011) and to an increased risk of dementia (Welmer et al 2014). Together with other deficits in physical function it predicts falls, especially in people with global cognitive impairment (Welmer et al 2016). The relationship between fast walking speed and health is rooted in more healthy behaviors, lower cardiovascular risk factors, and lower levels of inflammatory markers (Elbaz et al 2013). Slow walking speed, is strongly related to slow processing speed, an early sign of deteriorating cognitive functioning (Welmer et al 2014). Turning to the demographic and social correlates of walking speed, a gender difference has been observed, with men
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