The Long-Term Impacts of Dementia on Preventive Care Utilization and Health Behaviors

Dementia has large impact on individuals decision making, independent living, and wellbeing. Identifying early signals of dementia risk may offer people more time to prepare for the future, helping to delay the onset or slow the progression of dementia. Using the 1995-2018 waves of Health and Retirement Study, we offer novel evidence on the impacts of dementia on a rich set of preventive care utilization and health behaviors. Leveraging both within- and between-individual variations in an event study design, we characterize long-term dynamic changes in preventive care and health behaviors relative to the incidence of dementia and find early behavioral indicators of the disorder. We show that relative to the group of people who never develop dementia during the study periods, people with dementia have consistent and escalating declines in the use of cholesterol test, dental visit, prostate test and mammogram around the incidence of dementia. Significant declines are also found in physical activities and social engagement. Importantly, we demonstrate that the behavioral changes can occur up to 6 years before the incidence of dementia; and these patterns are absent in other chronic or acute conditions. The results are robust to sample selection, model specification, and the further control of aging and cohort effects. Overall, our findings highlight the salient impact of dementia risk on preventive care utilization and health behaviors, which may increase individuals vulnerability to health shocks. Detecting early signals of dementia and facilitating targeted interventions are thus called for to prevent individuals from adverse behavioral and health consequences.