Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #106629

M. Fahzy Abdul-Rahman, MS, School of Public Health, Division of Biostatistics, The Ohio State University, M-006 Starling Loving Hall, 320 West 10th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, 614-688-4234, abdul-rahman.4@osu.edu

The growing elderly population in the U.S. is raising great concerns in terms of elderly's prolonged longevity in poor health conditions along with their related escalating health care costs. These trends, along with other demographic trends, are causing intense burden mainly on the public welfare programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. To alleviate the public financial stress, the U.S. government has increased “normal” retirement for full Social Security benefits form 65, for those born before 1937, gradually to 67, for those born after 1960. The goal of this paper is to assess the impact of retirement status on people's physical activity based on Grossman's health capital model. This study utilizes the Health Retirement Survey, which is a multistage area probability sample of households based on a National Sample frame of 84 strata. This survey collects demographic, employment, health, insurance, transfer, and wealth information of non-institutionalized elderly in the U.S. born between 1924 and 1947. Using logistic regression, we measure the impact of retirement and health as reasons for retirement on self-reported performance of vigorous exercise, taking into account design of the survey. Preliminary results indicate that elderly who retire due to health reasons have fewer tendencies to perform rigorous exercise compared to working elderly. The findings in this study will provide some insights on the adjustments that need to be made on predictions of longevity in the U.S.

Learning Objectives:

• At the end of the session, participants will be able to evaluate the impact of retirement on elderly physical activity.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.