Multimorbidity and Socioeconomic Deprivation among Older Adults: A Cross-sectional Analysis in Five Canadian Cities Using the CLSA

Individual socioeconomic status is known to correlate with multimorbidity, but the role of neighbourhood-level socioeconomic deprivation is uncertain. Participants from five cities (n = 16,313) from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging were mapped by postal code and their local area socioeconomic deprivation scores were calculated using the Vancouver Area Neighbourhood Deprivation Index. Logistic regression models were used to estimate deprivation-associated odds of multimorbidity, controlling for age, sex, obesity, alcohol consumption, and tobacco use, and validated using a Bayesian machine learning technique. Significant associations with neighbourhood deprivation were observed, underscoring the importance of a person's local socioeconomic environment in multimorbidity risk, net of key covariates. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of community and health care organization and intervention programs targeting multimorbidity.