Persistently low wages are linked to significantly faster memory decline, according to a new Columbia University study.
Although low-wage work is associated with health outcomes such as symptoms of depression, obesity, and hypertension, which are risk factors for cognitive aging, no studies have been conducted to date. examines the specific relationship between low wages in years of employment and later perceptions. work.
Katrina Kezios, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and first author, said: Low wages during the highest income years are associated with faster memory decline.”
Low wages linked to faster memory decline
Research on the impact of lower incomes on health is expanding rapidly. Kezios and colleagues classified the low-wage histories of study participants as those who never earned low wages, intermittently low wages, or always earned low wages based on salaries earned in the past year. 1992 to 2004 and then looked at the relationship with memory decline over the next 12 years from 2004 to 2016.
The researchers found that, compared with never-low-wage workers, long-term low-wage workers experienced significantly faster memory decline at an older age. They experienced about an excessive year of cognitive aging over a 10-year period; in other words, the level of cognitive aging experienced over a 10-year period by consistently low-wage people would be the same level experienced by those who have never earned a low-wage in 11 years.
The Center on Aging concludes: “Future work should closely examine the number of dementia cases, and that too many years of cognitive aging could be prevented under various hypothetical situations that would increase levels of dementia. hourly minimum wage.”
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