New evidence on predictable validity of grip strength on later life outcomes in Japan

ABSTRACT

This study provides new evidence on the predictable validity of grip strength on later life outcomes using a population-based longitudinal survey of middle and older generations in Japan. We show that the level of grip strength contains significant information on health outcome and mortality in the later years although the loss of grip strength does not. Moreover, we confirm that grip strength is associated with socio-economic status, particularly with educational attainment.

KEYWORDS:

• Grip strength
• JSTAR
• health outcome
• mortality
• Japan

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I12
• I19
• J14

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Clouston (2013) and Zammit et al. (2018) reported most of the relevant papers since 2000 showed a significant association between cognitive function decline and weak grip strength on average but there was little evidence on longitudinal associations among rates of change.

² JSTAR is a Japanese counterpart of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the US and a sister of Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). See Ichimura, Hashimoto, and Shimizutani (2009) for the procedure to measure grip strength.

³ The results are available upon request from the authors.

⁴ When choosing control variables, we referred to Hairi et al. (2010) which used SHARE. For robustness checks, we have run regressions with more variables in accordance with Sternäng et al. (2015) which are available in our dataset: physical activities, self-reported health, depression, dementia, musculoskeletal disorders, symptoms of hypertension, heart disease, and stroke. The main results are intact.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (Grant Number 15H01951). The data work was done by Shimizutani and Yamada. The dataset is accessible through application at Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. The views expressed in this paper are completely personal; Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (A).