Lifestyle Risk Factors and Their Consequences among Older Adults in Mexico and the United States

Rebeca Wong, University of Maryland
Mary Beth Ofstedal, University of Michigan
Emily M. Agree, Johns Hopkins University

We examine the determinants and consequences of lifestyle risk factors among older adults comparing the United States and Mexico. We focus on the determinants of: smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, lack of physical activity, and overweight/obesity. We also investigate the consequences of these risk factors on: impaired physical activity, catastrophic health care needs (hospitalizations), and mortality. The research uses a conceptual framework incorporating the life course and economic model of health production. We use data from two-wave panels of the U.S. Health and Retirement Study 2000 and 2002, and the Mexican Health and Aging Study 2001 and 2003. We present a set of testable hypotheses for the cross-national comparison, descriptive analysis, and multivariate models of determinants and consequences of lifestyle risk factors. We follow with a discussion of results and implications for the likely burden of aging in countries in disparate stages of economic development.