The Longevity of Older Wives and Their Husbands: Comparing Actual Couples with Synthetic Couples

National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-06-01

Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we construct two measures of the longevity of older wives and husbands.For definiteness, we focus on couples in which the wife was 60 and the husband 62 in 1988.Our first measure utilizes a 4 x 4 "longevity matrix" in which the bins correspond to the decades in which the spouses died.For example, an entry in the (3,2) bin indicates that the wife died in the 3rd decade (between ages 80 and 89) and the husband in the second decade (between ages 72 and 81).Our second measures use the Gompertz distribution to estimate the censored observations from the NHIS.We use the Gompertz estimates of age-specific mortalities to construct joint and survivor life expectancies for the couples in our working sample.We compare the longevity estimates based on actual couples from the NHIS with estimates based on synthetic couples constructed from the 1988 CDC life tables.Research based on randomly formed synthetic couples constructed from CDC life table data shows that the randomness of mortality and the overlap between spouses' age-specific mortality distributions imply dramatically long life spans for surviving spouses.The 4 x 4 longevity matrices show that longevity effects are magnified at the level of the couple by assortative marriage.

Measuring Cognitive Function and Cognitive Decline With Response Time Data in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project

The Journals of Gerontology Series B · 2024-04-05 · 2 citations

OBJECTIVES: Scholarly, clinical, and policy interest in cognitive function has grown over the last several decades in part due to large increases in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias as populations age. However, adequate measures of cognitive function have not been available in many research data sets. We argue that a wealth of previously unexploited survey data exists to model cognition and cognitive decline. METHODS: We use metadata of the time it takes older respondents in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Survey, which we label response times (RTs), to answer questions in a standard cognitive assessment. We compare several measures of RT to a survey-adapted form of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). RESULTS: We show that RTs predict both concurrent and future MoCA scores. Our results show that longer and more varied RT at baseline predict lower MoCA scores 5 years later, net of baseline scores and controls. We also show that the effect of RT measures on predicting current MoCA differs for individuals of different races and ages, but are not different by gender. DISCUSSION: Our paper demonstrates that RTs constitute a separate powerful measure of cognitive functioning. RTs may be remarkably useful both to clinicians and social scientists because they can increase the accuracy of cognitive assessment without increasing the time it takes to administer the assessment.

Davis, Tom Edward

eCommons (Cornell University) · 2023-01-01

Memorial Statement for Tom Edward Davis who died in 2022. The memorial statements contained herein were prepared by the Office of the Dean of the University Faculty of Cornell University to honor its faculty for their service to the university.

COVID‐19 Policy Interventions and Fertility Dynamics in the Context of Pre‐Pandemic Welfare Support

Population and Development Review · 2023-04-28 · 14 citations

Abstract This paper focuses on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to explain fertility dynamics during the pandemic, while considering countries’ institutional context. We argue that containment policies disrupted people's lives and increased their uncertainty more in countries with weak welfare support systems, while health‐related and economic support NPIs mitigated such disruptions much more there, as they were less expected by citizens. We estimate monthly “excess” crude birth rates (CBRs) and find that countries with low public support—Southern Europe, East Asia, and Eastern Europe—experienced larger decreases and less of a rebound in CBRs than countries with histories of high public spending—Western, Central, and Northern Europe. However, in low support countries, NPIs are much more strongly associated with excess CBRs—containment NPIs more negatively and health and economic support NPIs more positively—with the exception of the one‐month lag of containment NPIs, for which the opposite holds. When putting these coefficients into broader perspective, our findings suggest that the actual implementation of all NPIs taken together mitigated fertility declines. This is especially the case for low public support countries, whereas one might have seen a birth decline even in high support countries if the NPIs were not implemented.

The effects of narrative and statistical messaging about air quality

Communication Research Reports · 2023-11-16 · 1 citations

Air pollution is among the world's greatest environmental health threats. Still, little strategic communication research has addressed it. We report two pre-registered experiments examining narrative and statistical message effects. Study 1 (N = 1,282, U.S.) showed little effect for either. Study 2 (N = 754, California), which accounted for potentially problematic design features of Study 1, found effects for both types across a range of attitudinal outcomes (emotional response, efficacy, risk). Narrative messaging also had a small effect on mitigation intention. Carefully designed messages may produce positive changes on this issue, but success depends on alignment between message construction, recommended behaviors, and audience relevance.

Early assessment of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and births in high-income countries

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 245 citations

• Sociology
• Geography
• Demography

Drawing on past pandemics, scholars have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring about fertility decline. Evidence from actual birth data has so far been scarce. This brief report uses data on vital statistics from a selection of high-income countries, including the United States. The pandemic has been accompanied by a significant drop in crude birth rates beyond that predicted by past trends in 7 out of the 22 countries considered, with particularly strong declines in southern Europe: Italy (-9.1%), Spain (-8.4%), and Portugal (-6.6%). Substantial heterogeneities are, however, observed.

Human Capital Investment: A History of Asian Immigrants and Their Family Ties

2021-04-28

Quick, Laura. <i>Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiv+214 pp. $98.00 (cloth).

The Journal of Religion · 2021-10-01