Pool LR, et al. - Authors ascertained if a negative wealth shock was related to all-cause mortality in middle-aged and older adults in the United States during 20 years of follow-up. An association between the loss of wealth over 2 years and an increased risk of all-cause mortality was seen in US adults aged 51 years and older.

Methods

• Experts conducted this Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative prospective cohort study of US adults aged 51 through 61 years at study entry.
• The 8,714 adults included in the study population were first assessed for a negative wealth shock in 1994 and followed biennially through 2014 (the most recent year of available data).
• The subjects who had experienced a negative wealth shock, defined as a loss of 75% or more of total net worth over a 2-year period, or asset poverty, defined as 0 or negative total net worth at study entry, were included.
• Authors collected the mortality data from the National Death Index and postmortem interviews with family members.
• They used the marginal structural survival methods to account for the potential bias because of the changes in health status that could both trigger negative wealth shocks and act as the mechanism through which negative wealth shocks could lead to increased mortality.

Results

• Findings suggested that there were 8,714 participants in the study sample (mean [SD] age at study entry, 55 [3.2] years; 53% women), out of which 2,430 experienced a negative wealth shock during follow-up, 749 had asset poverty at baseline, and 5,535 had continuously positive wealth without shock.
• During 80,683 person-years of follow-up, a total of 2,823 deaths occurred.
• Results demonstrated 30.6 vs 64.9 deaths per 1,000 person-years for those with continuously positive wealth compared to negative wealth shock (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.50; 95% CI, 1.36-1.67).
• As per the data, 73.4 deaths per 1,000 person-years were noted for those with asset poverty at baseline (adjusted HR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.44-1.94; vs with continuously positive wealth).