Citation

Reinhard E, Carrino L, Courtin E, van Lenthe F, Avendano M. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/aje/kwz149

PMID

31251811

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study examines whether the introduction of an age-friendly transportation policy, free bus passes for older adults, increased public transport use and in turn impacted cognitive function among older people in England. Data comes from 7 waves (2002-2014) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n =17,953), which measures global cognitive function, memory, executive function, and processing speed before and after the bus pass was introduced in 2006. The analytical strategy is an instrumental variable approach with fixed effects, which exploits the age-eligibility criteria for free bus passes and addresses bias due to reverse causality, measurement error, and time-invariant confounding. Eligibility for the bus pass is associated with a 7% increase in public transport use. The increase in public transportation use is associated with a 0.346 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.017,0.674) increase in the global cognitive function Z score and with a 0.546 (95% CI: 0.111,0.982) increase in memory Z score. Free bus passes increase public transport use, which in turn benefits cognitive function in older age. Public transport use may promote cognitive health through encouraging intellectually, socially, and physically active lifestyles. Transport policies may serve as public health tools to promote cognitive health in ageing populations.

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Language: en

Keywords

Aging; Cognition; Cognitive Aging; Policy; Transportation