08 September 2014 - 10 September 2014
University of Winchester, United Kingdom

British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference 2014

Valeria Bordone will present latest research from the Re-Aging project on cognitive functioning at this conference.

© Alvera | Dreamstime.com

© Alvera | Dreamstime.com

Under the title "Is healthy life expectancy increasing in terms of cognitive functioning?", this research was conducted as part of the Re-aging project at IIASA's World Population Program by Valeria Bordone, Nadia Steiber and Sergei Scherbov. The presentation will be held on Tuesday 9 September at 1.30pm in the session on "Ageing: transition in health". The 2014 BSPS Conference will be held at the University of Winchester, 8-10 September.

Abstract

Higher chronological age tends to be associated with lower cognitive functioning, especially regarding cognitive skills that are based on the brain’s capacity to process and memorize new information. In line with increases in healthy life expectancy, the question is whether or not people of a certain age today (e.g. age 60-75) perform better than people of the same age in the past. With this study, we aim to answer this question using data from the English Longitudinal study of Ageing (ELSA), the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). These data allow us to investigate cognitive functioning in a cross-country comparable framework along three dimensions (memory, verbal fluency, and the speed of processing). Preliminary results based on methods that overcome retest effects, which tend to produce upward bias in longitudinal studies of cognition, suggest that cognitive functioning has generally improved over time (i.e. across survey waves). This result holds for women and men, all age groups, and educational strata. Moreover, this result holds for all of the three surveys analysed. Several explanations will be proposed. 

For more information to the BSPS Annual Conference 2014 please visit the official website.


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Last edited: 02 September 2014

CONTACT DETAILS

Valeria Bordone

Guest Research Scholar Social Cohesion, Health, and Wellbeing Research Group - Population and Just Societies Program

Re-Aging Project

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313