Cross-National Comparisons of Cognitive and Physical Health in Older Adults Across China, Japan, and Korea: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background Cross-national studies are an emerging research area in public health. Specifically, cross-national health comparisons are important for understanding the factors driving the success or failure of public health policies. Therefore, this study systematically analyzed studies that compared health status (physical health and cognition) of the older adults using national panel data for three East Asian countries—China, Japan, and Korea. Methods Google Scholar and PubMed were used for the literature search. The search strategy targeted papers published between 2005 and 2020, yielding a total of 2690 papers, of which seven were selected for the review. The Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) criteria was used to assess study design quality. The risk of bias for non-randomized studies (RoBANS) tool, a quality assessment tool developed in Korea to evaluate non-randomized interventional studies, measured risk of bias. Results Of the seven included papers, two studies performed cognitive comparisons, four studies performed physical health comparisons, and one study compared both cognition and physical health. The studies selected for this study by CEBM criteria included four prospective cohort studies (Level 2B) and three expert opinions without explicit critical appraisal (Level 5). Risk of bias using the RoBANS tool found a risk of confounding variables in four out of seven papers. Finally, measurement items of cognitive and physical health differed across all three countries’ panel surveys. Conclusion These results suggest that in order to compare East Asian health policies according to the aging society, it is necessary to develop consistent cognitive and physical health evaluation tools in the future.

Developing a Cross-National Disability Measure for Older Adult Populations across Korea, China, and Japan

“…Our previous studies summarized seven studies that compared health in three countries using data from China, Korea, and Japan [ 24 ], and firstly revealed that a study on cognitive function after retirement in three countries showed that all three countries had a declining cognitive function after retirement according to sex, educational attachment, and wealth level. In this study, word recall was used to measure cognitive function.…”