Cognitive Impairment and Prevalence of Memory-Related Diagnoses among U.S. Older Adults

Yuting Qian, Xi Chen, Diwen Tang, Amy S. Kelley and Jing Li

No 777, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Cognitive impairment creates significant challenges to health and well-being of the fast-growing aging population. Early recognition of cognitive impairment may confer important advantages, allowing for diagnosis and appropriate treatment, education, psychosocial support, and improved decision-making regarding life planning, health care, and financial matters. Yet the prevalence of memory-related diagnoses among older adults with early symptoms of cognitive impairment is unknown. Using 2000-2014 Health and Retirement Survey - Medicare linked data, we leveraged within-individual variation in a longitudinal cohort design to examine the relationship between incident cognitive impairment and receipt of diagnosis among American older adults. Receipt of a memory-related diagnosis was determined by ICD-9-CM codes. Incident cognitive impairment was assessed using the modified Telephone Interview of Cognitive Status (TICS). We found overall low prevalence of early memory-related diagnosis, or high rate of underdiagnosis, among older adults showing symptoms of cognitive impairment, especially among non-whites and socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroups. Our findings call for targeted interventions to improve the rate of early diagnosis, especially among vulnerable populations.

Keywords: cognitive impairment; cognitive aging; dementia; Medicare; memory-related diagnosis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I14 I18 J14 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/229436/1/GLO-DP-0777.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cognitive Impairment and Prevalence of Memory-Related Diagnoses among U.S. Older Adults (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:777

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().