ORIGINAL ARTICLE: EPIDEMIOLOGY, CLINICAL PRACTICE AND HEALTH Association between employee benefits and frailty in community-dwelling older adults José Alberto Avila-Funes, 1,3 Diana Leticia Paniagua-Santos, 1 Vicente Escobar-Rivera, 2 Ana Patricia Navarrete-Reyes, 1 Sara Aguilar-Navarro 1 and Hélène Amieva 3 1 Department of Geriatrics, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Mexico City, and 2 Medicine, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico; and 3 Centre de recherche INSERM, U897, Univ Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France Aim: The phenotype of frailty has been associated with an increased vulnerability for the development of adverse health-related outcomes. The origin of frailty is multifactorial and financial issues could be implicated, as they have been associated with health status, well-being and mortality. However, the association between economic benefits and frailty has been poorly explored. Therefore, the objective was to determine the association between employee benefits and frailty. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 927 community-dwelling older adults aged 70 years and older participating in the Mexican Study of Nutritional and Psychosocial Markers of Frailty was carried out. Employee benefits were established according to eight characteristics: bonus, profit sharing, pension, health insurance, food stamps, housing credit, life insurance, and Christmas bonus. Frailty was defined according to a slightly modified version of the phenotype proposed by Fried et al. Multinomial logistic regression models were run to determine the association between employee benefits and frailty adjusting by sociodemographic and health covariates. Results: The prevalence of frailty was 14.1%, and 4.4% of participants rated their health status as “poor.” Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that employee benefits were statistically and independently associated with the frail subgroup (OR 0.85; 95% CI 0.74–0.98; P = 0.027) even after adjusting for potential confounders. Conclusions: Fewer employee benefits are associated with frailty. Supporting spreading employee benefits for older people could have a positive impact on the development of frailty and its consequences. Keywords: developing countries, employee benefits, epidemiology, frail elderly. Introduction Aging involves a multidimensional process of physical, psychological and social changes. Retirement is one of them, a transition event faced by older people with con- sequences in emotional, social and financial aspects. Up to 30% of retirees experience trouble coping with this transition, and 7% report their retirement as not satisfying, which might be explained by poor health status as well as by the lack of economic resources. 1,2 There is variability in income and employee benefits (EB) worldwide; such disparities are more evident in developing countries. In Mexico, the legal age to retire oscillates around 60 and 65 years. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- ment, Mexico has the highest effective retirement age for men and the second highest for women; however just 41% of the Mexican population have paid contri- butions at some point in their lives in order to be able to receive a retirement pension or health insurance. Therefore in Mexico, 74.4% of older people have no pension and 28.3% have no health insurance; 3,4 these individuals often rely on their family income or in gov- ernment aid programs aimed at citizens aged over 68 years for economic support. For instance, all adults aged over 68 years living in Mexico City are eligible for Accepted for publication 3 April 2015. Correspondence: José Alberto Avila-Funes MD, PhD, Department of Geriatrics, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Vasco de Quiroga 15, Colonia Belisario Domínguez Sección XVI, CP 14080, Tlalpan, Distrito Federal, Mexico City, México. Email: avilafunes@live.com.mx Geriatr Gerontol Int 2016; 16: –6 606 11 Geriatr Gerontol Int 2016; 16: 606–611. | © 2015 Japan Geriatrics Society 606 doi: 10.1111/ggi.12523