Diverse social environments and 10-year all-cause mortality in a cohort of historically excluded racial/ethnic older adults: A latent class analysis of social integration

Purpose: The association between social integration and mortality in older adults from historically excluded groups may not align with the patterns observed in predominately white samples. We modeled latent groups of social integration and their association with 10-year all-cause mortality in a cohort of older adults from historically excluded racial/ethnic groups. Methods: In a sub-sample of a national cohort study of older adults, we used latent class analysis to model social integration using ten item indicators spanning couple status, network characteristics, and neighborhood and community connections. Using a 3-step process, we estimated the relative odds (OR) of mortality over 10 years given membership in each latent class. Results: Among 873 historically excluded racial/ethnic older adults, a four-class solution was optimal given model fit indices, reduced entropy, interpretability, class sizes below 5 % of the sample, and model parsimony. We named these classes "One Family Connection", "Small, Interconnected Family", "Large, Interconnected Family", and "Large, Balanced, Friends and Family". Contrary to our hypothesis, there were no differences in the odds of mortality across latent classes. Conclusion: Older adults from historically excluded racial/ethnic groups have diverse social environments that, when modeled holistically, include aspects that may confer resilience against the risk of social isolation.