Cognitively healthy life expectancy of older women and men in India.
6 affiliations
- 1Center on Aging and Health, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.
- 2The Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
- 3Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
- 4Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
- 5Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
- 6Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Abstract
Rapid population aging and increasing life expectancy in India, the most populous country in the world, raise questions about the quality of these added years for older adults. Cognitive impairment, in particular, is a growing public health concern in India. We estimated cognitively healthy life expectancy (CHLE) and life expectancy with mild cognitive impairment and dementia at age 60 and 70 years using life tables from the Sample Registration System and Demographic and Health Surveys, linked with cognitive health data from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India - Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD; 2017-2019). Analyses were stratified by gender, rural-urban residence, and social group (Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe [SC/ST], Other Backward Classes, and high caste). Conditional on surviving to age 60, CHLE for women was only 0.86 years higher than for men. Larger differences in CHLE between groups emerge when examined by place of residence and social group. Compared to their urban counterparts, rural women and men had 2.2 and 3.1 fewer years of CHLE, respectively. In relative terms, rural women spent 4 percentage points less of their remaining life cognitively healthy, while rural men spent 8 percentage points less. By social group, SC/ST women and men lived 3.7 and 5.3 fewer cognitively healthy years than high-caste women and men, respectively, or 5 and 12 percentage points fewer in relative terms. Decomposition analyses indicated that subgroup differences in CHLE at age 60 are driven primarily by mortality rather than differences in the prevalence of cognitive impairment.
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BibTeX
@article{mani2026cognitively,
title = {{Cognitively healthy life expectancy of older women and men in India.}},
author = {Sneha Sarah Mani and Yuan S Zhang and Lindsay C Kobayashi and Alden L Gross},
journal = {SSM - population health},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.ssmph.2026.101981},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42898629},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Cognitively healthy life expectancy of older women and men in India.
AU - Sneha Sarah Mani
AU - Yuan S Zhang
AU - Lindsay C Kobayashi
AU - Alden L Gross
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/08
JO - SSM - population health
DO - 10.1016/j.ssmph.2026.101981
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42898629
AB - Rapid population aging and increasing life expectancy in India, the most populous country in the world, raise questions about the quality of these added years for older adults. Cognitive impairment, in particular, is a growing public health concern in India. We estimated cognitively healthy life expectancy (CHLE) and life expectancy with mild cognitive impairment and dementia at age 60 and 70 years using life tables from the Sample Registration System and Demographic and Health Surveys, linked with cognitive health data from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India - Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD; 2017-2019). Analyses were stratified by gender, rural-urban residence, and social group (Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe [SC/ST], Other Backward Classes, and high caste). Conditional on surviving to age 60, CHLE for women was only 0.86 years higher than for men. Larger differences in CHLE between groups emerge when examined by place of residence and social group. Compared to their urban counterparts, rural women and men had 2.2 and 3.1 fewer years of CHLE, respectively. In relative terms, rural women spent 4 percentage points less of their remaining life cognitively healthy, while rural men spent 8 percentage points less. By social group, SC/ST women and men lived 3.7 and 5.3 fewer cognitively healthy years than high-caste women and men, respectively, or 5 and 12 percentage points fewer in relative terms. Decomposition analyses indicated that subgroup differences in CHLE at age 60 are driven primarily by mortality rather than differences in the prevalence of cognitive impairment.
SN - 2352-8273
ER -