Senior Hispanics, African-Americans Have Higher Risk Disability

According to a new study published in the The American Journal of Public Health, African-Americans and Hispanics who are proficient in English have a 50% more chance of becoming disabled after age 65 when compared to similar old age whites and Hispanics who speak English very well.

This comes as a surprise since disability rates among the elderly are falling but no for Hispanics and African Americans, according to the new published study.

Conclusions in this study derived from a sample size of about 8000 adults age 65 years or older who tok part in a larger study known as" the Health and Retirement Study" funded by the National Institute of Aging. The university of Michigan designed and managed the study.

Participants of this study were with no disability when interviewed the first time. A second survey was carried out after six year with the same participants. This is when the study found that about 30 per cent of African Americans and 33% of Hispanics who did not have disability when they were first interviewed had developed significant issues to be considered disabled the second time around (this Hispanics and African Americans groups had to be interviewed in Spanish since they were not proficient in English)

When Whites and Hispanics who spoke English well were interviewed the second time (after 6 years) they had a disability rate of almost 20% for each group.

The observed differences in disability rates were statistically significant meaning that African Americans and Hispanics who do not command the English language are at a disadvantage in regard to developing disability probably because the fact that they can not express well in English constitutes a limiting facto for getting proper medical advise.

However, the study also showed that poverty is the main driver of these disability disparity seen. When the study adjusted for demographic factors and socioeconomic status the risk of disability for Hispanics was the same regardless of their English fluency.