One study highlighted that long before a person develops the disease Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia there are some economic signals. It tends to forget the deadlines of the installments of mortgages And loanswe fall behind with the bills and you can start taking it into consideration risky investments. Research has highlighted that long before symptoms of the disease are diagnosed, decision-making, including financial decision-making, can begin to deteriorate significantly. All this could provide an additional element for the early diagnosis of the disease.
The search results
The study was conducted by a team of economists from the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York and of doctors from the Georgetown University. The team analyzed the health data with that of the credit agency Equifax. The first study in this regard (Effect of early-stage Alzheimer's disease on household financial outcomes) is available on the government website National library of medicine. This study then received a series of confirmations and updates. The researchers focused their attention on the change in financial behavior of people in the years before and after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. Scores were associated with the various user groups.
Scores among people who developed dementia began to decline dramatically long before the disease was diagnosed. According to the study, one year before diagnosis, these people were 17.2% more likely to default on their mortgage payments than before the onset of the disease. And they were 34.3% more likely to default on other forms of payments such as utility bills.
Behavior changes 5 years before diagnosis
According to the study, people who experience cognitive decline begin to fall behind on payments on average 5 years before diagnosis.
“The results are striking in both their clarity and their consistency,” said Carole Roan Gresenz, an economist at Georgetown University. Scores and defaults “consistently worsen over time as diagnosis approaches, and therefore literally mirror the changes in cognitive decline that we are seeing.”
People who are starting to experience cognitive decline, it is highlighted, can skip paymentsDo impulsive purchases or allocate money to risky investments. All behaviors that they would not have considered before.
“We don't just become forgetful: ours changes too sensitivity to risk“, explained Lauren Hersch Nicholas, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, commenting on the study. For example, “it might suddenly seem like a good idea to move a diversified financial portfolio into some stock that someone has recommended.”
More vulnerable to scammers
But people, in the early stages of the disease, are also particularly vulnerable to scams and fraud. In a paper Nicholas and other co-authors explained that people likely to develop dementia have seen theirs family assets decrease In the previous decade to the diagnosis.
600,000 defaults caused by dementia
The New York Fed study estimates that they will occur in the United States alone 600,000 financial defaults over the next decade due to memory disorders not diagnosed in time. And the problem will go getting worse increasingly due to theaging of the population.
