IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ehbiol/v39y2020ics1570677x20302021.html

The effect of bereavement on cognitive functioning among elderly people: Evidence from Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Atalay, Kadir
  • Staneva, Anita

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of experiencing the death of a spouse, relative or close friend on cognitive functioning of Australian elderly. Using rich longitudinal data, we show that experiencing a loss is associated with a modest decline in cognitive function. Our results show that on average the effects are more pronounced for males and the strongest effects are associated with the loss of the spouse or a close friend. These events have significant effects on working memory and speed of information processing. We show that the decrease in cognitive functioning is accompanied by decreases in engagement in cognitive activities and declines in socialization. Our results are suggestive that programmes to support grieving individuals, including support for socialization activities, and extending active aging programmes could be important for promoting successful cognitive aging for the growing population of older adults.

Suggested Citation

  • Atalay, Kadir & Staneva, Anita, 2020. "The effect of bereavement on cognitive functioning among elderly people: Evidence from Australia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:39:y:2020:i:c:s1570677x20302021
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100932
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X20302021
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100932?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boukje Maria van Gelder & Marja Tijhuis & Sandra Kalmijn & Simona Giampaoli & Aulikki Nissinen & Daan Kromhout, 2006. "Marital Status and Living Situation During a 5-Year Period Are Associated With a Subsequent 10-Year Cognitive Decline in Older Men: The FINE Study," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 61(4), pages 213-219.
    2. Hannie C. Comijs & Tessa N. van den Kommer & Rebecca W. M. Minnaar & Brenda W. J. H. Penninx & Dorly J. H. Deeg, 2011. "Accumulated and Differential Effects of Life Events on Cognitive Decline in Older Persons: Depending on Depression, Baseline Cognition, or ApoE ϵ4 Status?," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 66(suppl_1), pages 111-120.
    3. John Fitzgerald & Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 1998. "An Analysis of Sample Attrition in Panel Data: The Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 33(2), pages 251-299.
    4. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353.
    5. Fu‐Min Tseng & Dennis Petrie & Shaolin Wang & Colin Macduff & Audrey I. Stephen, 2018. "The impact of spousal bereavement on hospitalisations: Evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 120-138, February.
    6. Thomas, Patricia A., 2011. "Gender, social engagement, and limitations in late life," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(9), pages 1428-1435.
    7. Sanna ReadPhD & Adelina Comas-Herrera & Emily Grundy & Marcus Schafer, 2020. "Social Isolation and Memory Decline in Later-life," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(2), pages 367-376.
    8. Waldron, Ingrid & Hughes, Mary Elizabeth & Brooks, Tracy L., 1996. "Marriage protection and marriage selection--Prospective evidence for reciprocal effects of marital status and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 113-123, July.
    9. James J. Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Petra Todd, 1998. "Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(2), pages 261-294.
    10. Tseng, Fu-Min & Petrie, Dennis & Leon-Gonzalez, Roberto, 2017. "The impact of spousal bereavement on subjective wellbeing: Evidence from the Taiwanese elderly population," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-12.
    11. Galatzer-Levy, Isaac R. & Bonanno, George A., 2012. "Beyond normality in the study of bereavement: Heterogeneity in depression outcomes following loss in older adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(12), pages 1987-1994.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Welters, Riccardo & Gerards, Ruud & Mellor, Kyran, 2024. "Homeownership, the unemployed and financial hardship," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Zhao, Yuejun & Inder, Brett & Kim, Jun Sung, 2021. "Spousal bereavement and the cognitive health of older adults in the US: New insights on channels, single items, and subjective evidence," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    3. Srivastava, Preety & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2021. "The effect of parental smoking on children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Islam, Asadul & Nguyen, Chau & Smyth, Russell, 2015. "Does microfinance change informal lending in village economies? Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 141-156.
    2. Zhao, Yuejun & Inder, Brett & Kim, Jun Sung, 2021. "Spousal bereavement and the cognitive health of older adults in the US: New insights on channels, single items, and subjective evidence," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    3. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    4. Andrea Pufahl & Christoph R. Weiss, 2009. "Evaluating the effects of farm programmes: results from propensity score matching," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 36(1), pages 79-101, March.
    5. Dettmann, E. & Becker, C. & Schmeißer, C., 2011. "Distance functions for matching in small samples," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 1942-1960, May.
    6. Francesco Vona & Giovanni Marin & Davide Consoli, 2019. "Measures, drivers and effects of green employment: evidence from US local labor markets, 2006–2014," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(5), pages 1021-1048.
    7. Slottje, Daniel J. & Millimet, Daniel L. & Buchanan, Michael J., 2007. "Econometric analysis of copyrights," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 303-317, August.
    8. Ramírez-Álvarez, Aurora Alejandra, 2019. "Land titling and its effect on the allocation of public goods: Evidence from Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    9. Yechan Park & Yuya Sasaki, 2024. "Matching $\leq$ Hybrid $\leq$ Difference in Differences," Papers 2411.07952, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    10. Yoko Kijima, 2022. "Effect of Nigeria’s e-voucher input subsidy program on fertilizer use, rice production, and household income," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(4), pages 919-935, August.
    11. Ashimwe, Olive, "undated". "An Economic Analysis Of Impact Of Weather Index-Based Crop Insurance On Household Income In Huye District Of Rwanda," Research Theses 265675, Collaborative Masters Program in Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    12. von Greiff, Jenny, 2009. "Displacement and self-employment entry," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 556-565, October.
    13. Kodjo Adandohoin & Vigninou Gammadigbe, 2022. "The revenue efficiency consequences of the announcement of a tax transition reform: The case of WAEMU countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 34(S1), pages 195-218, July.
    14. Richard Blundell & Lorraine Dearden & Barbara Sianesi, 2005. "Evaluating the effect of education on earnings: models, methods and results from the National Child Development Survey," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 168(3), pages 473-512, July.
    15. Juan Díaz & Miguel Jaramillo, 2006. "An Evaluation of the Peruvian "Youth Labor Training Program"-PROJOVEN," OVE Working Papers 1006, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE).
    16. Richard K. Crump & V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2006. "Moving the Goalposts: Addressing Limited Overlap in the Estimation of Average Treatment Effects by Changing the Estimand," NBER Technical Working Papers 0330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Romi Kher & Shu Yang & Scott L. Newbert, 2023. "Accelerating emergence: the causal (but contextual) effect of social impact accelerators on nascent for-profit social ventures," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 389-413, June.
    18. Richard K. Crump & V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Dealing with limited overlap in estimation of average treatment effects," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 96(1), pages 187-199.
    19. Mano, Yukichi & Akoten, John & Yoshino, Yutaka & Sonobe, Tetsushi, 2014. "Teaching KAIZEN to small business owners: An experiment in a metalworking cluster in Nairobi," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 25-42.
    20. Spermann, Alexander & Strotmann, Harald, 2005. "The Targeted Negative Income Tax (TNIT) in Germany: Evidence from a Quasi Experiment," ZEW Discussion Papers 05-68, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:39:y:2020:i:c:s1570677x20302021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622964 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.