Morbidity, disability, and mortality
This chapter reviews some major directions and findings from recent research on morbidity, disability, and mortality among adults and the elderly. One of the findings is that during the last two decades of the 20th century, the United States continued to exhibit shifts in the age distribution of both overall deaths and deaths from major degenerative diseases toward older ages. This is consistent with predictions from the fourth stage of the epidemiologic transition-the age of delayed degenerative diseases. Research on the dynamics of morbidity and mortality in medical demography shows that the age dependence of mortality risk can be substantially reduced or explained by taking into account several measures of physiological functioning. If the therapies have the effect of helping a larger fraction of elderly cohorts maintain their physiological parameters near the optimal values, this could reduce the age dependence of mortality and further raise life expectancy, which has implications for forecasts of the size and health status of the elderly population that are based on the medical demography model. Research in social demography, epidemiology, and medical sociology has greatly improved knowledge of how social, economic, and lifestyle/behavioral factors affect differentials in morbidity, disability, and mortality by sex, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
