Financial Strain Predicts Mortality in Older Women

Self-reported monthly income shortfall linked to 60 percent increased five-year risk of death

18 jan 2009-- In community-dwelling older women, especially black women, self-reported financial strain accurately predicts the risk of five-year mortality, according to a report published in the November issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Sarah L. Szanton, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, and colleagues studied 728 women aged 70 to 79 (76 percent of them white) from the Women's Health and Aging Studies I and II. They measured financial strain by assessing responses to the question: "At the end of the month, do you have some money left over, just enough, or not enough?"

Overall, the researchers found that 66 percent of the women reported that they had more than enough income while 29 percent had just enough, and 5 percent had not enough each month. They also found that those under strain financially were nearly 60 percent more likely to die within five years (independent of factors such as race, education, health insurance status and comorbidities). The investigators note that significantly more black women than white women reported having just enough (43 percent versus 24 percent) or not enough (11 percent versus 5 percent), and that the association between financial strain and mortality was more than 2.5 times higher among black women.

"Future research could use financial strain as an additional measure of financial resources in older women," the authors conclude. "Studying financial strain in older adults may be a more precise way of observing socioeconomic status because it probes the issue of adequacy. Furthermore, addressing the imbalance between need and resource in older adults may be a more practical intervention target (e.g., in the form of prescription co-pay supports or increases in food stamps) than increasing actual monetary supports."

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