Veenstra Marijke, Løset Gøril Kvamme, Daatland Svein Olav
NOVA, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway.
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 6;12:717959. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717959. eCollection 2021.
Diverging trends of longer lives and increased inequalities in age-at-death invite to updated research on late-life mortality. Earlier studies have identified health behavior, childhood, psychosocial, and material conditions as key determinants of life expectancy, but the role of psychological factors remains a topic of debate. The current study is framed in a life course developmental perspective and assesses the mediating role of secondary control strategies (subjective age) and primary control capacity (perceived control) to socioeconomic (wealth and education) inequality in mortality after age 67. Data are derived from the second wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation study (=1,432 and age 67-85). All in all, 366 deaths were observed over a mean follow-up of 9.6years. Perceived control was measured by the Pearlin and Schooler Mastery Scale. SA was measured with proportional discrepancy scores in felt age and ideal age. Stepwise Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were conducted to analyze the relative contribution of SES (education and accumulated wealth), felt age, and ideal age discrepancies and perceived control on 11-year mortality. Findings show that lower levels of wealth and perceived control independently predict increased elderly mortality over an 11-year period. Feeling younger and smaller ideal age discrepancies are positively associated with perceived control, but do not account for additional variability in longevity among older adults. Findings add to the interdisciplinary field of socioeconomic inequalities in elderly mortality and underline the specific importance of structural conditions (wealth) and the continued importance of (perceived) primary control capacity for longevity also after age 67. Future research may assess in more detail how wealth and perceived control complement each other in contributing to healthy aging and longevity, for example, by longitudinal research including the role of significant life events in the second half of life in different welfare state contexts.
寿命延长与死亡年龄不平等加剧的不同趋势促使人们对晚年死亡率进行更新研究。早期研究已将健康行为、童年、心理社会和物质条件确定为预期寿命的关键决定因素，但心理因素的作用仍是一个有争议的话题。本研究从生命历程发展的角度进行构建，评估了二级控制策略（主观年龄）和一级控制能力（感知控制）对67岁以后死亡率的社会经济（财富和教育）不平等的中介作用。数据来自挪威生命历程、老龄化与代际研究的第二轮（n = 1432，年龄在67 - 85岁之间）。总共观察到366例死亡，平均随访时间为9.6年。感知控制通过皮尔林和斯库勒的掌控感量表进行测量。主观年龄通过感觉年龄与理想年龄的比例差异得分来测量。进行逐步Cox比例风险回归分析，以分析社会经济地位（教育和累积财富）、感觉年龄、理想年龄差异以及感知控制对11年死亡率的相对贡献。研究结果表明，较低水平的财富和感知控制独立预测了11年期间老年人死亡率的增加。感觉更年轻以及理想年龄差异较小与感知控制呈正相关，但并不能解释老年人寿命的额外变异性。研究结果为老年人死亡率社会经济不平等的跨学科领域增添了内容，并强调了结构条件（财富）的特殊重要性以及（感知到的）一级控制能力对67岁以后寿命的持续重要性。未来的研究可以更详细地评估财富和感知控制如何相互补充以促进健康老龄化和长寿，例如，通过纵向研究，包括在不同福利国家背景下重大生活事件在生命后半段的作用。
