LAUSR

Low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing rapid aging, growing dementia burden, and relatively high rates of out-migration among working age adults. Family-member migration status may be a unique societal determinant of cognitive aging in LMIC settings. We aimed to evaluate the effect of adult child United States migration status on change in cognitive performance scores using data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, a population-based, national-level cohort of adults in Mexico > 50 years old at baseline (2001), with 2, 11, and 14-year follow-up waves (2003, 2012, 2015). 5972 and 4933 respondents completed cognitive performance assessments at 11 and 14-years, respectively. For women, having an adult child in the United States was associated with steeper decline in verbal memory scores (e.g. marginal risk differences at 9-year follow-up for immediate verbal recall z-score: -0.09; 95% Confidence Interval (CI): -0.16, -0.03; delayed verbal recall z-score: -0.10; 95% CI: -0.17, -0.03; overall cognitive performance: -0.04, 95% CI: -0.07, -0.02). There were mostly null associations for men. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to evaluate the association between family member migration status and cognitive decline; future work should be extended to other LMICs facing population aging.