IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v81y2026i3pgbaf263..html

Sex differences in the association between occupational environment exposures and cognitive function outcomes in later life

Author

Listed:
  • Qiuchang (Katy) Cao
  • Dawn C Carr
  • Melissa Radey
  • Kenzie Latham-Mintus

Abstract

ObjectivesSex differences in later-life cognitive function have been shown to be partially related to the over- and under-representation of male and female workers in different types of occupations. However, another important factor that has not been systematically evaluated is whether cognitive benefits or consequences of specific occupational exposures differ by sex. Our study addresses this knowledge gap.MethodsThis study uses longitudinal data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study linked to occupational data based on the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database. We examined two established composite occupational exposure measures shown to influence cognitive function: occupational complexity and occupational hazards. Ordinary least squares regression models were used to evaluate whether the association between occupational exposures and late-life cognitive function was dependent on sex, including when accounting for early-life factors.ResultsSex moderated the association between occupational exposures and later-life cognitive function. Specifically, older men—but not women—experienced both significant cognitive benefits in association with occupational complexity (Δy/Δx = 0.06, p

Suggested Citation

  • Qiuchang (Katy) Cao & Dawn C Carr & Melissa Radey & Kenzie Latham-Mintus, 2026. "Sex differences in the association between occupational environment exposures and cognitive function outcomes in later life," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 81(3), pages 263.-263..
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:81:y:2026:i:3:p:gbaf263.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaf263
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    for a different version of it.

    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:oup:geronb:v:81:y:2026:i:3:p:gbaf263.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    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.