COHESIVENESS AND COHERENCE: RELIGION AND THE HEALTH OF THE ELDERLY (NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, YALE AGING PROJECT)

The study examines patterns of religious involvement and health status among noninstitutionalized elderly residents of New Haven, Connecticut in 1982. Cross-sectional analysis of data from the Yale Health and Aging Project (N = 2811) showed that higher levels of public and private religious involvement were related to better health status, as indicated by measures of chronic conditions, functional disability, depression, and self-assessment of health. Four alternative explanatory hypotheses derived from classical sociological theories of religion are proposed, three arguments for main effects of religious involvement and one for an interactive effect. The explanations were tested in hierarchical multiple regression analyses. While religious involvement was positively related to all measures of health status, public religious involvement had stronger associations than private involvement, and the associations were stronger for women than for men. The better health practices of the more religious elderly, the greater religious involvement of married elderly men, and the stronger senses of coherence among the more religious elderly, in part accounted for their better health levels. In addition, religious involvement interacted with objective health status in its association with subjective health status, showing the non-religiously-involved, chronically ill elderly to be at greatest risk of functional disability, depression, and poor self-assessment of health.