The silver lining: A decade of improvement in disability-free living among older Americans (2008–2017)

Abstract

Recent research indicates that there has been a decline in the prevalence of many types of disabilities among older Americans. Less is known about temporal trends in disability-free life among older Americans. This study aims to: (1) detect temporal trends in the prevalence and odds of being free of disabilities among Americans aged 65+; 2) establish if these temporal trends differ by gender and age cohort (65–74; 75–84; 85 and older); 3) examine if these temporal trends are attenuated by generational differences in educational attainment. We conducted a secondary analysis of 10 years of annual nationally representative data from the American Community Survey with 5.4 million community-dwelling and institutionalized older adults. Individuals were defined as free from disability if they did not have serious memory problems, hearing problems, serious vision problems, limitations in activities of daily living (i.e., bathing, dressing), or functional limitations (i.e., walking, climbing stairs). The prevalence of being free of all disabilities among the US population aged 65 and older increased from 60.8 % to 64.9 % between 2008 and 2017. Had the prevalence remained at the 2008 levels, there would have been an additional 2.07 million older Americans living with one or more disabilities in 2017. The improvements in the odds of being free of disabilities across the decade was higher for women (26 %) than for men (18 %). Much of the improvement was due to higher levels of education. Improvements among baby boomers (aged 65–74) were much more modest than among older cohorts.