Cohort Trends in the Gender Distribution of Household Tasks and the Implications for Understanding Disability

• In Event: 1517 - Section on Disability and Society Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Gender, Race, and Disability

Abstract

Objectives: As the American population becomes older, precise measurement of disability is increasingly important. However, measuring disability accurately remains difficult as disability is defined as the inability to perform social roles in a given environment. We examine how traditionally patriarchal engagement in the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) is shifting by gender and birth cohort among older adults and the implications for measuring population-level disability.
Methods: We use the Health and Retirement Study (N=25,047) and multinomial logistic regression models with an interaction term between gender and birth cohort to predict being limited and being disengaged relative to no difficulty conducting the IADL activities. We also depict age trajectories of IADL limitations and disengagement by cohort.
Results: The propensity to indicate disengagement in IADLs has decreased markedly among younger cohorts. Women in younger cohorts are significantly less likely to indicate not using a map while men in younger cohorts are significantly less likely to indicate not preparing a meal or shopping. In contrast, the influence of age and period on gender-specific disengagement reports are negligible.
Discussion: A failure to account for gender and cohort changes in IADL engagement may lead to systematic bias in estimates of population-level disability.

Authors

• Connor Sheehan, University of Texas-Austin

• Eileen Crimmins, University of Southern California