Huffman Curtis, Regules-García Ricardo, Vargas-Chanes Delfino
Development Studies Program, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAMPUED).
(Population Council).
Demogr Res. 2019 Jul-Dec;41(50):1401-1436. doi: 10.4054/DemRes.2019.41.50.
Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults, knowledge regarding typical age-related developmental changes in living arrangements is of a major concern for public health policymakers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries dealing with growing aging populations. However, the much-needed empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics is hindered by a lack of proper data.
To exploit often-available short-term longitudinal data in the study of long-term phenomena, in this paper we accelerate the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) panel as a means to explore, over a broad age span, the household dynamics of Mexican older adults.
Instead of working with a priori definitions of different household structures when analyzing transitions between them, we introduce a novel approach that estimates latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of older people as they age.
We show how accelerated longitudinal designs, coupled with latent class analysis, can offer new insights into living arrangement dynamics. Our findings suggest that in Mexico the typical living arrangements at 50 years old serve as an important predictor of future living arrangements, and that typical living-arrangement trajectories are strongly gendered in Mexico. This new approach may prove to be indispensible when determining the social support needed by high-risk population groups and as a means to better anticipate the necessary financial resources to do so.
由于生活安排对老年人的福祉有诸多影响，了解生活安排中与年龄相关的典型发展变化是公共卫生政策制定者主要关注的问题，特别是在应对人口老龄化加剧的低收入和中等收入国家。然而，由于缺乏合适的数据，对生活安排动态进行急需的实证分析受到阻碍。
为了在长期现象研究中利用经常可得的短期纵向数据，在本文中，我们加速推进墨西哥健康与老龄化研究（MHAS）面板，以此作为一种手段，在广泛的年龄跨度内探究墨西哥老年人的家庭动态。
在分析不同家庭结构之间的转变时，我们不是使用先验定义，而是引入一种新颖的方法，该方法估计老年人随着年龄增长其家庭构成中发展趋势的潜在类别。
我们展示了加速纵向设计与潜在类别分析相结合如何能够为生活安排动态提供新的见解。我们的研究结果表明，在墨西哥，50岁时的典型生活安排是未来生活安排的重要预测指标，并且在墨西哥，典型的生活安排轨迹存在强烈的性别差异。当确定高危人群所需的社会支持以及作为更好地预测所需财政资源的一种手段时，这种新方法可能被证明是不可或缺的。
