Abstract
Previous studies indicate that occupation might affect cognitive functioning in late life. As people in low and middle income countries often have to work until late life, we sought to investigate if there are cognitive benefits to working later into life and whether cognitive function deteriorates after exiting the labor force. We analyzed longitudinal data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), a nationally representative sample of Mexican adults age 50+ (n=7,375), that assessed cognitive functioning by verbal learning, delayed recall, and visual scanning. Analyses were carried out using mixed-effects modeling corrected for the influence of gender, IADLs, diabetes, stroke, hypertension, depression, income, and marital status. Results suggest that working actively, compared to exiting the workforce, was associated with cognitive performance only in context with occupation. Domestic workers had a faster decline in verbal learning (b=-0.02, p=0.020) and delayed recall (b=-0.02, p=0.036) if they continued working actively and people working in administration (b=0.03, p=0.007), sales (b=0.02, p=0.044), and educators (b=0.03, p=0.049) had a slower decline in visual scanning if they continued working in old age. Our findings indicate that continued participation in the labor force in old age does not necessarily come with cognitive benefits. Whether or not working actively in later life protects or even harms cognitive functioning is likely to depend on the type of job.
Highlights
While population ageing is occurring at a global level (World Health Organization, 2016), this process is occurring especially rapidly in Mexico and Latin America (Wong and Palloni, 2009)
There seems to be a tendency for manual work to come with a higher dementia risk (Qiu et al, 2003) and for sedentary occupations to come with a lower dementia risk (Anttila et al, 2002)
This study aimed to evaluate variation in cognitive function in old age according to occupation in the context of a developing country
Summary
While population ageing is occurring at a global level (World Health Organization, 2016), this process is occurring especially rapidly in Mexico and Latin America (Wong and Palloni, 2009). Less research has investigated the associations between occupation throughout the lifecourse and cognitive function in late life in Mexico. This is a considerable omission as research in developed countries has demonstrated important differences in old age cognition by occupation (Dartigues et al, 1992a; Andel et al, 2005; Smart et al, 2014). People who have occupations with greater complexity tend to have better cognitive functioning in old age (Finkel et al, 2009) and seem to have a lower dementia risk ( et al, 2014)
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