{"doi":"10.1093/geronb/gbaa175","title":"Racial/Ethnic Differences in Mortality in Late Midlife: Have They Narrowed in Recent Years?","abstract":"OBJECTIVES: To examine whether racial/ethnic differences in mortality rates have changed in recent years among adults in late midlife, and if so, how. METHODS: We analyze Health and Retirement Study data on non-Hispanic Whites (Whites), non-Hispanic Blacks (Blacks), and English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanics (Hispanic-English and Hispanic-Spanish), aged 50-64 from 2 periods: 1998-2004 (Period 1, n = 8,920) and 2004-2010 (Period 2, n = 7,224). Using survey-generalized linear regression techniques, we model death-by-end-of-period as a function of race/ethnicity and sequentially adjust for a series of period-specific baseline risk factors including demographics, health status, health insurance, health behaviors, and social networks. Regression decomposition techniques are used to assess the contribution of these factors to observed racial/ethnic differences in mortality rates. RESULTS: The odds ratio for death (ORD) was not statistically different for Blacks (vs. Whites) in Period 1 but was 33% higher in Period 2 (OR = 1.33; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.05-1.69). The adjusted ORD among Hispanic-English (vs. Whites) was not statistically different in both periods. The adjusted ORD among Hispanic-Spanish (vs. Whites) was lower (ORD = 0.36; 95% CI = 0.22-0.59) in Period 1 but indistinguishable in Period 2. In Period 1, 50.1% of the disparity in mortality rates among Blacks was explained by baseline health status, 53.1% was explained by financial factors. In Period 2, 55.8% of the disparity in mortality rates was explained by health status, 40.0% by financial factors, and 16.2% by health insurance status. DISCUSSION: Mortality rates among Blacks and Hispanic-Spanish have risen since the mid-1990s. Hispanic-Spanish may be losing their advantageous lower risk of mortality, long known as the \"Hispanic Paradox.\"","journal":"The Journals of Gerontology Series B","year":2020,"id":116977,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8473,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":546453,"name":"Gail A. Jensen","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":303806,"name":"Wassim Tarraf","orcid":"0000-0001-8888-7918","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":545932,"name":"Adit Doza","orcid":"0009-0001-6484-2229","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":40,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:47.803267Z","pmid":"33053179","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}