Good news for older adults and those who care about them: The prevalence of disabilities among Americans aged 65 or more years is “much lower” than it was for the same age group a decade earlier.
That’s according to researchers whose meta analysis results recently were published online in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
The decline in disability among older Americans was “substantial,” according to the findings. Between 2008 and 2017, the odds of experiencing limitations in activities of daily living declined 18%, and the odds of experiencing functional limitations decreased 13%.
In 2008, 12.1% of older Americans reported ADL limitations, but by 2017, that percentage had dropped to 9.6%. “To put this into perspective, if the prevalence of limitations in daily living remained at the 2008 levels, an additional 1.27 million older Americans would have ADL limitations in 2017,” according to a press release touting the findings.
Also, the percentage of functional limitations among those aged 65 or more years decreased from 27.3% in 2008 to 23.5% in 2017. Therefore, 1.89 million fewer older adults experienced functional limitations on their quality of life.
Results were more marked for women and those with more education, with researchers saying that women are more likely than men to have annual check-ups and adopt preventive care practices, and those with more education may have higher health literacy and adopt more health-promoting behaviors.
“The dramatic improvement in the prevalence of older Americans experiencing disabilities has important implications for our communities,” first author Esme Fuller-Thomson, PhD, director of the University of Toronto’s Institute for Life Course and Aging and professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Department of Family and Community Medicine, said in a statement. “This decline in the prevalence of disabilities has a wide range of benefits for older adults, their families and caregivers, and the healthcare system at large.”
Time will tell what it means specifically for senior living, but if you’re assuming that baby boomers will be healthier than the preceding generations, you may be in for a surprise. This study found a more modest decline in disability among those in the Baby Boom generation compared with older groups. This finding may be due to higher rates of obesity among baby boomers, according to the researchers. Further study is needed to determine whether the positive trends seen in this study will continue, they said.
Lois A. Bowers is the editor of McKnight’s Senior Living. Read her other columns here.
This research was reported in the McKnight’s Senior Living Daily Briefing and the McKnight’s Clinical Daily e-newsletters.
