[Factors predicting mortality in two years among the elderly at home in three different socioeconomic areas]

Random samples of elderly living at home aged 60 to 89 years old from 3 different socioeconomic areas, Shinagawa-ku in Tokyo, Shimizu city in Shizuoka Prefecture and central Tottori Prefecture, were interviewed between September 1984 and March 1985, regarding self-rated health related items. The sample comprising 3,580 persons was followed to the end of 1986 and survival status was studied. At follow up 434 subjects had died, and 67 had left the study areas. The purpose of this paper is to examine correlates of mortality after controlling for sex, age and activities of daily living (ADL). The main results were as follows: 1. Physical activity in work and/or leisure and its decline were strong influential factors in mortality. After controlling for age and ADL, mortality was not found to have a strong correlation to the presence of chronic disease. 2. The elderly who stopped smoking tobacco and/or drinking alcohol had a high mortality rate. This result was probably the result of a serious decline in physical health being the motive to stop smoking and drinking. 3. Self-rated health and subjective well-being were independent predictors of survival after controlling for age and ADL. Regional differences of self-rated health and subjective well-being were found, although these differences did not appear to produce regional differences in mortality. This indicates that subjective rating is not only a reflection of health status, but is also modified by psychosocial factors and that proxy use of subjective health status ratings in regional comparisons of health is problematic.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)