Does the Death of a Child Prior to Midlife Increase Later Dementia Risk for Parents? Is this Disadvantage Greater for Black Parents than for White Parents?

Dementia is a growing public health concern in the United States. Like other health outcomes in the U.S., the burdens of dementia are borne more heavily by black Americans than they are for white Americans. A number of biological, psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms are associated with increased risk for dementia, but specific life course events that could trigger these mechanisms, such as the death of a child, have been largely unstudied. In this brief, PRC director Debra Umberson, former PRC graduate student trainees Rachel Donnelly and Minle Xu, and PRC graduate student trainees Mateo Farina and Michael A. Garcia use Health and Retirement Study data to show that the death of a child prior to midlife increases dementia risk for both black and white parents. Black parents are disadvantaged in that they are more likely than white parents to experience the death of a child, and such losses add to the already substantial racial disadvantage in dementia risk.