The Gerontologist Copyright 2006 by The Gerontological Society of America Vol. 46, No. 6, 735–743 Network Type and Mortality Risk in Later Life Howard Litwin, DSW, 1 and Sharon Shiovitz-Ezra, PhD 2 Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the association of baseline network type and 7-year mortality risk in later life. Design and Methods: We executed secondary analysis of all-cause mortality in Israel using data from a 1997 national survey of adults aged 60 and older (N = 5,055) that was linked to records from the National Death Registry up to 2004. We considered six network types—diverse, friend focused, neighbor focused, family focused, community–clan, and restricted—in the analysis, controlling for population group, sociodemographic background, and health factors. We carried out Cox proportional hazards regressions for the entire sample and separately by age group at baseline: 60–69, 70– 79, and 80 and older. Results: Network types were associated with mortality in the 70–79 and 80 and older age groups. Respondents located in diverse and friend-focused network types, and to a lesser degree those located in community–clan network types, had a lower risk of mortality compared to individuals belonging to restricted networks. Implications: Ger- ontological practitioners should address older adults’ social networks in their assessments of clients. The parameters used to derive network types in this study can serve toward the development of practical network type inventories. Moreover, practitioners should tailor the interventions they implement to the different network types in which their elderly clients are embedded. Key Words: Social network, Survival, Israel, Friends, Risk This article considers the association of social network type and survival in later life. The social networks of older people tend to vary in size and composition. Such variations, reflected in a range of network types, may be related to rates of mortality. Examination of this association is important for gerontological knowledge development insofar as most of the factors that correlate with late-life mortality are irreversible. Exceptional in this respect is the domain of social network, which can serve as a target of purposive social intervention. The notion of network type constitutes a useful diagnostic and analytic construct. Despite the poten- tial contribution of this emerging measure, research- ers have not yet applied it to the analysis of mortality in later life. The current investigation addresses this goal by using network-related survey data to derive network types and linking these types with mortal- ity statistics. As such, the study allows for the con- sideration of the association of baseline network type with all-cause mortality 7 years later. The inquiry addresses two major questions: (a) Do different network types have a differing risk of mortality? and (b) Is the association between network type and mortality similar for all age groups in older age? Another important aspect addressed in the current analysis is the association of ethnic or cultural back- ground, network type, and late-life mortality. Investi- gators have noted that different ethnic groups reflect characteristically different network types. Thus, it is necessary to consider whether there are indeed dif- fering ethnic risks of mortality, and, if so, whether such differences are related to network type. We based the current inquiry on a sample of older adults in Israel. This study setting allows for exam- ination of the main factors of interest in this investigation, that is, network type, age group, ethni- city, and mortality. The ethnic groups addressed in the analysis reflect the major cultural groupings in contemporary Israeli society: the veteran Jewish Israeli population, Arab Israelis, and new immi- grants since 1989 (mostly Jews) who came from the former Soviet Union. Groundbreaking research in the late 1970s estab- lished the association between social network and survival (Berkman & Syme, 1979). Several studies have since confirmed the association in a range of settings (Cohen, Teresi, & Holmes, 1987; Giles, Glonek, Luszcz, & Andrews, 2005; Orthgomer & Johnson, 1987; Sugisawa, Liang, & Liu, 1994; Yasuda et al., 1997). However, some studies still This research was funded by the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology. Address correspondence to Howard Litwin, DSW, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905-IL, Israel. E-mail: mshowie@huji.ac.il 1 Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel. 2 Israel Gerontological Data Center, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel. Vol. 46, No. 6, 2006 735 by guest on February 19, 2016 http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from