
Zhenmei ZhangMichigan State University | MSU · Department of Sociology
Zhenmei Zhang
Ph.D.
About
70
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
August 2006 - present
January 2006 - present
January 2001 - present
Publications
Publications (70)
Dementia increases the susceptibility of older adults to financial exploitation, including abuse by relatives or acquaintances and fraud by strangers. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a novel community-based financial exploitation prevention model for older adults with dementia residing in rural Michigan. Drawing from the routine activity...
Objectives
Recent studies have found that perceived discrimination as a chronic stressor predicts poorer cognitive health. However, little research has investigated how social relationships as potential intervening mechanisms may mitigate or exacerbate this association. Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. older adults, this study exami...
Objectives
This study provides one of the first national longitudinal studies of the association between caring for grandchildren (i.e., grandparenting) and the risk of dementia in the U.S., with a focus on gender-specific variations.
Method
We estimated discrete-time event history models, drawing upon data from the Health and Retirement Study (20...
Cognitive impairment renders older adults more vulnerable to financial exploitation (i.e., financial abuse committed by family members, or someone known to victims, and financial fraud committed by strangers). This study developed and tested the efficacy of a community-based financial exploitation prevention model for older adults living with demen...
Widowhood has been identified as a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia. Yet less is known about the protective and exacerbating factors of cognitive decline following widowhood. This study examines the roles of friendship characteristics in moderating the negative effect of spousal loss on cognition for older Americans. Drawing on data f...
Previous research has suggested that unmarried persons may be disadvantaged in personal networks and social support. However, little is known about whether the quantity and quality of social relationships differ by marital status among older Americans. Using data from the 2006 and 2008 psychosocial questionnaires of the Health and Retirement Study,...
Objectives
The likelihood of providing care to a spouse in middle and older ages has increased as life expectancy increases, but knowledge about how the caregiver and care recipient influence each other’s mental health is limited. This study examined whether a partner’s physical, cognitive, and mental health in a spousal caregiving dyad are associa...
Objectives:
The likelihood of providing care to a spouse in middle and older ages has increased as life expectancy increases, but knowledge about how the caregiver and care recipient influence each other's mental health is limited. This study examined whether a partner's physical, cognitive, and mental health in a spousal caregiving dyad are assoc...
Objectives
This study examines the association between age at marital loss (i.e., divorce or widowhood) and cognitive function in later life and whether the association differs by gender.
Methods
We used mixed-effects models, drawing on longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2016). The analytical samples included older adults...
We examined whether baseline depression is associated with myocardial infarction (MI) within a 2-year period among middle-age and older adults in China and whether the association varies by sociodemographic characteristics. Two-year longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of people aged 45+ years in China were analyzed (N = 15 226...
In the current literature on cognitive function, life course socioeconomic status (SES) and engaging in leisure activities are often viewed as parallel measures of cognitive reserve that independently affect cognitive impairment in old age. Some studies also suggest that leisure activity mediates the effect of SES on cognitive impairment. What is l...
This study examined the cross-sectional associations between intergenerational caregiving and health risks among sandwiched Chinese grandparents who provide care to grandchildren, great-grandparents, or both. Drawing on biomarker data from the 2011 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (N range = 2,189–3,035), we measured age-r...
While the separate effects of socioeconomic status and engaging in leisure activities on cognition have been well documented, their interaction effect has rarely been examined. After examining life course socioeconomic status (SES) on cognitive impairment in old age, this paper is focused on exploring the interaction effects between life course SES...
Research on grandparenting (i.e., caring for grandchildren) and mental health in Asian contexts has been limited, despite the rapid growth of older adults who take care of grandchildren. This study aims to investigate how grandparenting influences depressive symptoms. Using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011–2015, N = 4354), w...
Although previous studies showed that children are the primary source of old-age support in China, much less is known about the availability and sources of social support among childless elders. Also, little research has explored how older adults’ social support transitions over time by childless status. Using the 2005 and 2011 Chinese Longitudinal...
We provide one of the first national longitudinal studies of the association between trajectories of marital quality and cognitive functioning among older adults, with close attention paid to gender differences. Data were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) 2006–2016. Marital quality trajectories were assessed at three waves: 2006/2008...
This study examined financial maltreatment from the perspectives of Chinese American elders via a mixed method approach. Three focus groups of Chinese American elders and one group of service professionals recruited from Phoenix metropolitan areas shared their insights of financial maltreatment and contributed to the refinement of questions in the...
Recent studies have found that marital loss through divorce or widowhood is associated with a higher risk of dementia for older adults. However, whether these associations vary by race and gender is less clear. To address this gap, we drew upon longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2016) to investigate the association between...
Previous research has shown that unmarried individuals (i.e., divorced, widowed, and never married) had a higher risk of dementia than their married counterparts. However, few studies examined whether the link between marital status and dementia varies by race. To fill the gap, we used data from the Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2000-20...
Objectives
We provide the first nationally representative population-based study of cognitive disparities among same-sex and different-sex couples in the United States.
Method
We analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2016). The sample included 23,669 respondents (196 same-sex partners and 23,473 different-sex partners) aged 50 a...
Objectives:
This study examines the longitudinal relationships between retrospective reports of early-life social relationships (i.e., having good friends, parent-child relationship quality, and childhood neighborhood social cohesion) and episodic memory in China.
Methods:
We analyzed two waves of data (2011 and 2015) from the China Health and R...
Objectives
This study aimed to examine whether gender and marital status of coresiding adult children are associated with depressive symptoms of Chinese older adults.
Methods
Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, linear regression analysis was conducted to identify longitudinal associations of intergenerational coresi...
Objectives: 1) Examine effects of depression and hypertension on cardiovascular events (CV) in a two-year period. 2) Explore urban and rural differences Methods: Data from the first two waves of Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, with a national sample of 14,560 adults age 45+, were used. The dependent variable is whether a CV (defin...
Although the association between childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and late-life cognition is well-established, the mechanisms underlying this association are less clear. One important potential mediator seldom examined is adolescent cognitive ability. To address this gap, we examined 5,880 respondents from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, whic...
Objectives:
We provide one of the first population-based studies of variation in dementia by marital status in the U.S.
Method:
We analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2014). The sample included 15,379 respondents (6,650 men and 8,729 women) age 52 and over in 2000 who showed no evidence of dementia at the baseline survey. De...
Substantial research shows that cardiovascular disease is a major cause of disability in the United States of America (USA) and worldwide. Despite the well-documented significance of intimate partnerships for cardiovascular health and disease management, how relationship quality contributes to the functional health of older adults diagnosed with ca...
There is growing evidence from Western countries that widowhood may affect cognitive health in later life. However, little is known about whether widowhood is associated with cognitive health in Eastern Asian countries such as China and what factors may explain the association between widowhood and cognitive health. We add to this line of research...
Objective: This study examined the association between childhood conditions and cognitive function among middle-aged and older adults in China. Method: We analyzed data from the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (N = 11,868). Cognitive function was measured by word recall, a test of episodic memory. We examined the association bet...
This study examines the relationship between productive activities and cognitive decline among older adults aged 50 years and over in China and whether this relationship varies by gender and urban/rural residence using a sample of 13,596 respondents from three waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Results from Generalized Est...
The objective of this study was to examine how age at first marriage is related to the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and cancer in later life. We analyzed longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of 2129 older adults (born in the 1940s or earlier) in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. We found that fo...
An increasing number of older Korean women have played an important role in taking care of their grandchildren to help their adult children. This study investigates the effects of grandparenting on older women’ health in South Korea. Using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (N = 3,092), we estimated ordinal logistic regression models with lagge...
This study examines the self-reported health of 180,291 married non-Hispanic blacks and whites in interracial versus endogamous marriages. Data are from the National Health Interview Survey pooled over the period 1997–2013. The results from ordinal logistic regressions show that non-Hispanic whites intermarried with non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispani...
Background:
Existing studies of the 1944-45 Dutch famine found little evidence of the association between early life malnutrition and midlife cognition.
Methods:
Among 2446 rural participants born between 1958 and 1963 in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we examined effects of exposure to China's 1959-61 Great Leap Forward fam...
With the rapid aging of the Chinese population, growing attention has been given to old-age support. Widowed older adults constitute a particularly vulnerable population because the loss of a spouse can lead to financial hardships and emotional distress. We used data from the 2002 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey to examine multiple di...
With the rapid aging of the Chinese population, growing attention has been given to old-age support. Widowed older adults constitute a particularly vulnerable population because the loss of a spouse can lead to financial hardships and emotional distress. We used data from the 2002 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey to examine multiple di...
With the rapid aging of the Chinese population, growing attention has been given to old-age support. Widowed older adults constitute a particularly vulnerable population because the loss of a spouse can lead to financial hardships and emotional distress. We used data from the 2002 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey to examine multiple di...
China accounts for a large number of suicides worldwide, and most occur in rural areas. Suicide research in China has primarily focused on individual-level risk factors, few have studied the influence of neighborhood contexts. This ecological study examines the association of suicide rates with social fragmentation and socioeconomic deprivation in...
This is one of the first studies to examine the buffering effect of neighborhood resources, specifically leisure amenities and voluntary associations, on the relationship between poor physical health and depressive symptoms among older persons in China. Using data from the 2011 baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study,...
Blacks are especially hard hit by cognitive impairment at older ages compared to whites. Here, we take advantage of the Health and Retirement Study (1998–2010) to assess how this racial divide in cognitive impairment is associated with the racial stratification of life course exposures and resources over a 12-year period among 8,946 non-Hispanic wh...
A long tradition of research has found that being married is associated with better mental health, lower rates of chronic illness, fewer functioning problems and disabilities, and longer life expectancy in the United States (Pienta, Hayward, & Jenkins, 2000; Umberson, Thomeer, & Williams, 2013; Waite & Gallagher, 2000). More recent research on marr...
Objective: Studies have reported that rural elders in China have higher levels of depression than their urban peers. We aimed to examine the extent to which four sets of factors (socioeconomic status [SES], health care access, health status, and social support and participation) account for such rural–urban differences. Method: Cross-sectional data...
The fetal origins hypothesis posits that adverse prenatal exposures, particularly malnutrition, increase the risk of poor adult health. Studies using famine as a natural experiment to test the fetal origins hypothesis present conflicting findings, partly because of data limitations and modeling flaws. Capitalizing on the biomarker data and prefectu...
Objectives
This study aimed to examine whether physical infrastructure and availability of three types of community resources (old-age income support, healthcare facilities, and elder activity centers) in rural villages are associated with depressive symptoms among older adults in rural China.Method
Data were from the 2011 baseline survey of the Ch...
This study examines the relationship between education and mortality, its underlying mechanisms, and its gender and age variations among older adults in China, using data from the 2002 to 2011 waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. There is an inverse relationship between education and mortality risk. The relationship is explai...
This paper examines how adult children's expressed filial piety, receipt of help from parents, socioeconomic resources, and parents' needs are associated with the likelihood of parent-child coresidence in contemporary China. Drawing on the 2002 wave of the Chinese Survey of Family Dynamics and the 2002 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longe...
This article examines the relationship between young women’s fertility expectations and educational expectations in late adolescence and at the outset of adulthood. Given progressive macro-level changes in the United States beginning in the 1960s, we compare the expectation patterns of youth from two cohorts using data from the National Longitudina...
This study examined disability trends by marital status among older adults aged 60 and above from 1997 to 2010 in the U.S. We addressed two questions: (1) Has the relationship between marital status and disability changed over the study period? (2) Can the trends be explained by changes in socioeconomic status? We paid special attention to potentia...
Recent research showed that mistreatment of nursing home residents by other residents may be highly prevalent. The present study examined the issue from family members' perspectives. The data came from the 2005 and 2007 random-digit dial telephone surveys of Michigan households with a family member in long-term care. Based on family members' report...
This study examined the morbidity patterns of foreign-born Hispanics, U.S.-born
Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites aged 53 years and older using seven selfreported
physician-diagnosed chronic diseases as well as six biomarkers.
Drawing on the 2006 Health and Retirement Study and its biomarker data,
the authors found that foreign-born Hispanics had compa...
Few empirical studies have focused on elder abuse in nursing home settings. The present study investigated the prevalence and risk factors of staff physical abuse among elderly individuals receiving nursing home care in Michigan. A random sample of 452 adults with elderly relatives, older than 65 years, and in nursing home care completed a telephon...
Population trends suggest that the next 20 years will witness a dramatic increase in the adult population aged 65 and older. Projected increases in the elderly population are expected to significantly increase the stress on family and professional caretakers. Stress, in the context of caregiving relationships, is a risk factor associated with incre...
Although research on domestic elder abuse and neglect has grown over the past 20 years, there is limited research on elder neglect in nursing homes. The purpose of this study is to estimate the incidence of elder neglect in nursing homes and identify the individual and contextual risks associated with elder neglect. Data came from a 2005 random dig...
Late-life cognitive impairment may have its origins in childhood. Here, we examine the associations between markers of childhood nutritional deprivation and cognitive impairment in older adults. We made use of the 2002 and 2005 waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey to examine these associations for persons aged 65-105 (N=15,444...
Prior research finds a race anomaly in subjective life expectancy such
that Blacks expect to live longer than Whites even though their actual life
expectancy is lower, but it does not include other racial-ethnic groups.
Using data from the 1998 Health and Retirement Study (n = 8,077), the
authors find that the race anomaly in subjective survival ex...
The positive impact of access to healthcare on health and survival among older adults is well-documented in Western societies. However, whether the pattern still holds in developing countries where healthcare coverage is more limited is largely unknown. China, a developing country with the largest population in the world, has been transforming its...
This article examines the effects of early life socioeconomic conditions on the risk of cognitive impairment among oldest old persons in China. We also examine whether adult socioeconomic status mediates the association between early life socioeconomic status and cognitive impairment in old age.
Data derived from two waves (1998-2000) of the Chines...
Changes in the public and individual burden of chronic health problems have significant implications for the allocation of public and private resources across generations. Preston (1984) noted almost two decades ago that population ageing in the United States was accompanied by the rapid expansion of public programs benefiting the health of eldersw...
Drawing on 5 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the influence of the marital life course on the prevalence and incidence of cardiovascular disease among 9,434 middle-aged individuals. Results show that compared to continuously married persons, both men and women with a marital loss have significantly higher prevalence of cardiovas...
This study examines the effects of marital history on the burden of cardiovascular disease in midlife. With use of data from the 1992 Health and Retirement Study, a series of nested logistic regression models was used to estimate the association between marital history and the likelihood of cardiovascular disease. Results suggest that, in midlife,...
Research in China has shown that women are significantly disadvantaged in cognitive functioning in old age. This article adds to this line of inquiry by examining gender differentials in the odds of having cognitive impairment at baseline and during follow-up among the Chinese oldest old, as well as the potential pathways linking gender and the lik...
Drawing on 5 waves of the Health and Retirement
Study, we examine the influence of the
marital life course on the prevalence and incidence
of cardiovascular disease among 9,434
middle-aged individuals. Results show that
compared to continuously married persons,
both men and women with a marital loss have
significantly higher prevalence of cardiovas...
This study examines the issue of age-structure transitions and intergenerational transfers from a macro rather than a micro perspective: to what extent might changing age structure, brought about by the demographic transition and subsequent baby booms and busts, have contributed to economic fluctuations experienced in countries around the globe in...
Rapid growth in the size of the childless elderly population has prompted concerns about the negative effects of childlessness on psychological well-being. This study adds to this line of inquiry by examining the effects of childlessness on two important dimensions of elderly persons' psychological well-being: loneliness and depression.
Using the 1...