Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Duke University Population Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Apr 23;76(5):944-955. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa166.
Hearing impairment is one of the most common disabilities among older people, and its prevalence will increase as the U.S. population ages. However, little is known about social disparities in onset or transitions into and out of hearing impairment, nor how these transitions impact years of life to be spent impaired.
We investigate the number of years an "average" person can expect to live with and without hearing impairment after age 50; sex, race, educational, and regional differences in these expectancies; and the implication of hearing impairment for remaining life expectancy. Bayesian multistate life table methods are applied to 9 waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2014) to investigate social disparities in life expectancy with hearing impairment (n = 20,200) for the general population, people hearing impaired at age 50, and people hearing unimpaired at age 50.
Men, Hispanics, persons with less educational attainment, and those born in the south can expect to live a larger proportion of their remaining lives hearing impaired. Although transitions from hearing impaired to unimpaired occur, those with some hearing impairment at age 50 can expect to live more years with hearing impairment, and hearing impairment does not shorten remaining life expectancy.
Significant sociodemographic disparities in hearing impaired life expectancy exist. In contrast to past research, we find that hearing impairment does not affect total life expectancy. Future research should consider the consequences of hearing impairment for years to be lived with other age-related and potentially downstream health outcomes.
听力障碍是老年人中最常见的残疾之一，随着美国人口老龄化，其患病率将会增加。然而，人们对于听力障碍的发病或进入和退出听力障碍的社会差异知之甚少，也不知道这些转变如何影响到有听力障碍的生活年限。
我们研究了“平均”人在 50 岁后可能有多少年没有听力障碍和有听力障碍；这些期望在性别、种族、教育和地区方面的差异；以及听力障碍对剩余预期寿命的影响。贝叶斯多状态生命表方法应用于健康与退休研究（1998-2014 年）的 9 个波次数据，以调查一般人群、50 岁时听力受损人群和 50 岁时听力正常人群的听力障碍预期寿命中的社会差异。
男性、西班牙裔、受教育程度较低的人群以及出生在南部的人群，他们在剩余生命中听力受损的比例预计会更大。尽管存在从听力受损到未受损的转变，但那些在 50 岁时已有一些听力障碍的人预计会有更多的听力受损年限，而且听力障碍不会缩短剩余的预期寿命。
听力障碍预期寿命存在显著的社会人口差异。与过去的研究不同，我们发现听力障碍不会影响总预期寿命。未来的研究应该考虑听力障碍对与年龄相关的其他健康结果以及潜在的下游健康结果的影响。
