How a Lifetime of Circumstance Shapes the Way Older Adults Lose Mobility

Mobility is often treated as a purely biological matter — a question of muscles, joints, and the slow attrition of the ageing body. But a new comparative study suggests that the trajectory of mobility decline in later life is written long before old age arrives, shaped by education, occupation, gender roles, marriage, religion, diet, housing, and even the climate in which a person grows old. The research, published in BMC Geriatrics, compared the perspectives of older adults in Canada and Nigeria, offering a rare side-by-side look at how mobility is experienced in a high-income country and a low-resource setting.

The study, led by Ogochukwu Kelechi Onyeso of the University of Lethbridge and colleagues at institutions in Canada and Nigeria, used a qualitative description design to explore how community-dwelling older adults understand the sociodemographic forces behind mobility decline. The researchers recruited eighteen Canadian and eighteen Nigerian participants aged 65 to 89 years through community-based organisations, deliberately drawing from diverse sociodemographic strata. Of the 36 participants, 47.2 percent were women, 66.7 percent had a spouse or partner, and 86.1 percent were middle-income earners. Semi-structured interviews captured participants’ own experiences of, and observations about, losing the capacity to move freely, and the transcripts were analysed using conventional content analysis.

From this analysis, the team organised the findings into four broad domains: demographic, socioeconomic, sociocultural, and socioenvironmental factors. Within the demographic domain, participants identified older age itself, the experience of ageism, the burden of women’s traditional gender roles, and singlehood or widowhood as forces perceived to erode mobility. The comparison between the two countries proved especially revealing here. Nigerian participants described gender-related influences on mobility decline, while most Canadian participants perceived no such gender effect — a divergence the researchers attribute to cultural differences in how gender and ageing are understood and lived in the two societies.

The socioeconomic domain highlighted education, occupation type, and income as perceived determinants of how mobility unfolds across the life course. This aligns with a substantial body of epidemiological work showing that socioeconomic position accumulates its effects over decades: physically demanding occupations may wear down joints and the spine, lower educational attainment can limit health literacy and access to preventive care, and constrained income restricts everything from nutritious food to safe housing and assistive devices. What the new study adds is the voice of older adults themselves, describing how these forces played out in their own lives and in the lives of people around them.

Sociocultural factors emerged as a third pillar. Participants pointed to traditional dietary patterns, religious practices, and social participation as influences on their mobility trajectories. In the Nigerian context, traditional diets and communal religious life are deeply woven into daily routines, and the study suggests these patterns can either support or constrain physical activity and movement depending on the circumstances. Social participation — belonging to groups, attending gatherings, remaining embedded in community life — was perceived as a resource that helps sustain mobility, echoing the well-documented association between social engagement and physical function in later life.

The fourth domain, socioenvironmental factors, produced one of the study’s most striking findings: a direct reversal of perception between the two national groups. Most Canadian participants believed that rural dwellers experience poorer mobility, while Nigerian participants believed the opposite — that rural living is associated with better mobility. The divergence makes sense when the two environments are placed side by side. In Canada, rural areas can mean long distances to services, limited public transport, and harsh winters that isolate residents. In Nigeria, rural life often involves habitual walking, agricultural work, and close-knit communities, even where formal infrastructure is lacking. The same category of environment, in other words, carries opposite mobility implications depending on the surrounding economic and policy context.

Housing quality and climatic challenges also featured prominently in participants’ accounts. Urban versus rural living conditions, the physical characteristics of the home, and the demands imposed by climate were all perceived to shape how freely older adults can move. For the Canadian participants, cold winters and icy conditions represent a recurring barrier to safe walking and outdoor activity. For Nigerian participants, heat, seasonal rains, and uneven infrastructure present their own hazards. These observations underscore that mobility is not simply an attribute of the individual but a product of the continuous interaction between a body and its surroundings.

Beyond cataloguing influences, the researchers documented the recommendations participants offered for mitigating mobility decline. Older adults in both countries advocated for supportive environments and for policies that recognise the unique sociodemographic contexts in which people age. The authors argue that policymakers can enhance equity in ageing experiences by implementing age-friendly community initiatives that support the mobility of older adults, with particular attention to low-resource and rural areas. Such initiatives — a concept championed by the World Health Organization — typically address features like walkable streets, accessible public transport, safe pedestrian crossings, affordable housing, and opportunities for social participation, all of which map directly onto the four domains identified in the study.

The study’s life-course framing is central to its significance. Rather than treating mobility decline as an event of old age, the research situates it as the endpoint of decades of accumulated advantage and disadvantage. A woman whose gender role confined her to physically taxing domestic labour, a worker whose occupation damaged joints, a widow who lost the social and practical support of a partner, a rural resident whose environment either demands daily walking or makes it impossible — each carries a different mobility history into later life. By asking older adults to reflect on these histories, the study captures dimensions of decline that clinical measures of gait speed or grip strength cannot.

The comparative design also carries methodological weight. Qualitative studies of ageing are frequently conducted within a single national context, and findings are sometimes generalised as if universal. This study demonstrates that even basic assumptions — whether gender matters for mobility, whether rural life helps or harms — can flip between high-income and low-resource settings. For global health, the implication is that mobility interventions cannot be transplanted wholesale from wealthy to lower-income contexts. Policies must be calibrated to the cultural, economic, and environmental realities of the population they serve. As the world’s population ages, with the fastest growth occurring in low- and middle-income countries, understanding these contextual differences becomes not an academic luxury but a practical necessity for preserving independence, dignity, and quality of life in old age.

Subject of Research: Life-course sociodemographic influences on mobility decline in older adults in Canada and Nigeria

Article Title: Life-course sociodemographic influences on mobility decline: a comparative qualitative study of older adults’ perspectives in Canada and Nigeria

Article References: Onyeso, O. K., Victor, J., Onyeso, K. M., Ojembe, B. U., Alumona, C. J., Odole, A. C., Doan, J., & Awosoga, O. A. (2026). Life-course sociodemographic influences on mobility decline: a comparative qualitative study of older adults’ perspectives in Canada and Nigeria. BMC Geriatrics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-026-08359-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12877-026-08359-w

Keywords: mobility decline, healthy ageing, older adults, life course, social determinants of health, qualitative research, Canada, Nigeria, age-friendly communities, rural ageing, gender roles, gerontology