ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2026
Demographic and biosocial determinants of beneficial trends in older adult cognition in the USA and England: the role of cohort succession.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundConcerns about the consequences of rapid population aging in the USA and England often neglect the key demographic processes of cohort succession and its influence on population health. In this study, we quantify the extent to which trends between 2004 and 2018 in older US and English adults' cognition functioning are related to population composition changes in three areas: (i) age distribution, (ii) socioeconomic factors, and (iii) chronic disease prevalence.
methodsUsing data from the USA-based Health and Retirement Study (n = 17 305 person-years) and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (n = 7557 person-years), we apply the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder two-fold decomposition to estimate the contributions of changes in each country's population composition to changes in overall cognitive functioning between 2004 and 2018.
resultsFor both men and women, improvements in cognitive functioning were largely driven by cohort succession increasing the average educational attainment of the two populations. Increases in the proportions of the youngest old adults counteracted the negative contributions of increased proportions of the oldest adults. However, increases in the prevalence of psychological conditions (for US men, US women, and English women) and the prevalence of diabetes and divorce (for US women) emerge as specific risk factors that are detrimental to continued gains in cognitive functioning.
conclusionPopulation aging may not necessarily portend an increasing burden of cognitive diseases when cohorts bring different socioeconomic and health protective and risk factors with them into older adulthood.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.