| Summary: | Background and objective: With aging, cognitive impairment is severe in
the aging society. This paper aimed to investigate the association between
cognitive impairment and marital status and the empirical typology of cognitive
impairment in Chinese aging population.
Methods: Descriptive statistics were performed by retrieving data from
the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to test the relation
between cognitive impairment and marital status with univariate linear regression
and multivariate linear regression. The subgroups of cognitive impairment for
included older subjects were identified with latent profile analysis (LPA).
Results: The sample included 13,149 participants aged 40 years or older.
Both unmarried males and females suffer lower cognitive function than married
males and females (p < 0.001). The declining trend remained consistent
(p < 0.05) after adjustment for covariates. The participants who were
illiterate or older or agricultural hukou had lower cognitive functions than
their counterparts. LPA results showed that the cognitive function of
participants could be divided into three subgroups.
Conclusions: Unmarried males and females had lower cognitive function
than that of married counterparts due to the declined percentage of class two,
who have high mental intactness and episodic memory.
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