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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 3|pp 2670—2679

Determinants and indicators of successful ageing associated with mortality: a 4-year population-based study

Wei-Ju Lee1,2, Li-Ning Peng1,3, Ming-Hsien Lin1,3, Ching-Hui Loh1,4, Liang-Kung Chen1,3
  • 1Aging and Health Research Center, National Yang Ming University, Taipei 11211, Taiwan
  • 2Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital Yuanshan Branch, Yuanshan Township, Yilan County 264, Taiwan
  • 3Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 11217, Taiwan
  • 4Center of Health and Aging, Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien County 790, Taiwan
Received: October 13, 2019Accepted: January 12, 2020Published: February 6, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102769

Copyright: © 2020 Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Successful aging may be a solution to the major challenges that population aging poses to healthcare systems, financial security, and labor force supply. Hence, we studied the value of factors discovered by exploratory factor analysis in predicting four main indicators of successful aging, and their association with mortality. We followed-up a nationally representative sample of 1284 older adults for a median of 50 months. Successful aging was defined by fast walking, independence, emotional vitality, and self-rated health. Exploratory factor analysis revealed five determinants: physical activity, life satisfaction and financial status, health status, stress, and cognitive function. Physical activity and health status were significant factors in living independently. Life satisfaction and financial status were associated with walking speed. Stress was solely associated with emotional vitality. Life satisfaction and financial status, and health status, were important predictors of self-rated health. Compared to people without any successful aging indicators, those with one, two, three, or four showed dose-dependent lessening of mortality risk, with respective hazard ratios of 0.39 (95% CI 0.25–0.59), 0.29 (95% CI 0.17–0.50), 0.23 (95% CI 0.11–0.51), and 0.09 (95% CI 0.01–0.66). These associations were stronger in males, older adults, smokers, and drinkers, than in their counterparts.