Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper addresses the question of how socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, health status and health behaviors are associated with oldest-old mortality and survivorship among people who have survived to old age. Data comes from the 1990-91 National Health Interview Survey’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Supplement and the mortality follow-up through 2002. The results indicate that activity limitation and exercise status, in combination with education, play an important role in survival into ages between 65 and 85, but have a smaller effect on survival among the oldest-old population of 85+.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium January 2002. This paper evaluates age and sex specific patterns of change in underlying and multiple cause of death reports for the period 1980-1998 for 14 leading causes of death at ages 65 and older. Changes in four types of mortality measures will be analyzed: 1 underlying cause death rates 2 multiple cause death rates 3 associated cause death rates and 4 death rates based on the joint occurrences of multiple cause conditions. Implications of the results are discussed in the context of existing models for analyzing and forecasting future mortality patterns in the U.S.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This article estimates the impact of obesity and diabetes on disability and mortality for those older than 65 using the 2004 National Long Term Care Survey with disability based on the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act's Activities of Daily Living and Cognitive Impairment triggers.

Description: Presented at the Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper examines the relationship between the earliest stages of dementia—mild cognitive impairment—and mortality. Using data from long-term care insurance applicants, and linking this to the Social Security Master Death File, the authors focus on the classification results of two cognitive screens used at various times in the underwriting process. Applying the Cox Proportional Hazards Model as well as relative mortality ratio analysis, the authors show that the proportion of individuals classified as cognitively impaired have significantly higher relative mortality compared to those classified as cognitively intact.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper first explores the current state and contributing causes of obesity. It then explores the mortality and health care costs of obesity. It ends with a discussion of its management.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium, January 2011. This paper investigates dynamic properties of age trajectories of physiological indices and their effects on mortality risk and longevity using longitudinal data on more than 5,000 individuals collected in biannual examinations of the Framingham Heart Study original age group during about 50 subsequent years of follow up.

Description: This paper reviews the geriatric literature to identify risk factors that could be used by insurers to identify existing or incipient frailty.

Description: Successful healthcare reform: First, it must help that must keep healthy people healthy. Second, it must help people mitigate or eliminate the health-risks associated with unhealthy lifestyle behavior choices, and Third, it must ensure the provision of evidence-based care to those who are ill.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium, January 2011. Using longitudinal data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey, this paper seeks to identify social, behavioral and psycho-social factors associated with change in health status to provide insight for the aging baby boomers to help them foster a healthy aging experience.