Table 3A.

Relative risk ratios of 2-year physical limitation status in Mexican adults aged 60 or older, 2001–2003

Variables at baseline (2001)	Status at 2-year follow-up
	Worse	Improved	Deceased
	(Reference: Same)
Demographic
Aged 75 or older	1.50***	1.37**	2.63***
Location size (ref.: 100,000 inhabitants or more)
Less than 100,000 inhabitants	0.99	0.97	0.70*
Gender (ref.: Men)
Women	1.48***	1.47***	0.68*
Education (ref.: No education)
Between 1 and 6 years	1.11	0.89	0.89
7 years or more	0.93	0.85	1.19
Marital Status (ref.: Non-married)
Married	1.06	1.15	0.80
Socioeconomic
Social support
Help from neighbors and/or children	0.94	0.98	1.45
Monthly income
(ref.: No or negative income)
Less than 5,000 Mexican Pesos	1.21	1.05	0.96
5,000 Mexican Pesos or more	0.84	0.90	0.55*
Insurance
Any coverage	0.90	0.88	0.88
Health and function variables
Poor self-rated health	1.25*	1.73***	1.95***
Depression (ref.: CES-D of 4 or more)	1.20*	1.99***	2.03***
Total cognition score	0.98***	0.99*	0.97***
Hypertension	1.11	1.06	1.28
Diabetes	1.36**	1.02	1.74**
Cancer	1.43	1.06	0.93
Respiratory diseases	1.10	1.53**	1.80*
Heart condition	1.60*	2.36***	2.19*
Stroke	0.89	1.05	1.58
Constant	0.41***	0.24***	0.11***
Unweighted N	4,297
Pseudo-R 2	0.05

Note: Authors’ own elaboration with data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (Mexican Health and Aging Study, 2001, 2003). “Same” means the respondent had the same number of dimensions of physical ability with a limitation in 2001 and in 2003 and is the reference category. “Worse” means the respondent had more dimensions of physical limitation in 2003 than in 2001. “Improved” means the respondent had fewer dimensions of physical limitation in 2003 than in 2001. MXP = Mexican Pesos (1 USD is roughly equivalent to 22.50 MXP at the current exchange rates).

Significance:

^*p ≤ .05;

^**p ≤ .01;

^***p ≤ .001. Confidence intervals omitted due to space constraints. Values shown are unweighted.