New
Study Shows Older Adults With Alzheimer’s Face Financial Difficulties Even Before Diagnosis
Memory issues, confusion and personality changes are thought to be early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, but a new study shows financial decline in older adults can be another early indicator.
Older adults who eventually were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s were 17.2% more likely to have fallen behind on mortgage payments, according to a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University. They also were more likely to have fallen behind on credit card payments, including up to several years before they were diagnosed with dementia.
The study used data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP) and the Master Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF), which contains data on Medicare enrollees, from 2000 to 2017.
The study shows the closer to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, the lower the credit scores averaged. Credit scores averaged 1 to 2 points lower than the baseline three to five years before an older adult was diagnosed with dementia. Credit scores were on average 4 to 6 points lower in the year before an older adult was diagnosed with dementia.
Following a diagnosis, credit scores only decline further, averaging more than nine points below the baseline for the next seven years after a diagnosis.
“The results are striking in both their clarity and their consistency,” Georgetown Economist Carole Roan Gresenz, one of the study’s authors, told the New York Times. She also told the publication that credit scores “consistently worsen over time as diagnosis approaches, and so it literally mirrors the changes in cognitive decline that we’re observing.”
In addition to the findings, the study’s authors wrote there is a potential to use the information on credit outcomes to develop machine learning algorithms to help identify individuals at risk for an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
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