Risks and subgroups of cognitive impairment under different marital status among older adults: a latent profile analysis

Background and objective: With aging, cognitive impairment is severe in the aging society. This paper aimed to investigate the association between cognitive impairment and marital status and the empirical typology of cognitive impairment in Chinese aging population.Methods: Descriptive statistics were performed by retrieving data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to test the relation between cognitive impairment and marital status with univariate linear regression and multivariate linear regression. The subgroups of cognitive impairment for included older subjects were identified with latent profile analysis (LPA).Results: The sample included 13,149 participants aged 40 years or older. Both unmarried males and females suffer lower cognitive function than married males and females (P < 0.001). The declining trend remained consistent (P < 0.05) after adjustment for covariates. The participants who were illiterate or older or agricultural hukou had lower cognitive functions than their counterparts. LPA results showed that the cognitive function of participants could be divided into three subgroups.Conclusions: Unmarried males and females had lower cognitive function than that of married counterparts due to the declined percentage of class two, who have high mental intactness and episodic memory.